


Pyrolysis

by follow_the_sun



Series: Shrinkyclinks Hijinks [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety Disorder, Bucky Barnes as Captain America, Canon Disabled Character, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Complicated Relationships, De-Serumed Steve Rogers, F/M, M/M, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Swearing, Winter Soldier Peggy Carter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 21:52:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 90,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8464402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/follow_the_sun/pseuds/follow_the_sun
Summary: Steve Rogers, born in 1918, woke up seventy years after World War II, discovered that he'd lost the super-soldier serum, and thought he'd left S.H.I.E.L.D. behind for good. Bucky Barnes, born in 1985, lost an arm during a stint as a POW and left the Army with a cool new prosthetic but without a sense of purpose--until a visit from Nick Fury changed everything. Now Bucky is the new Captain America, and he and Steve are building a life together. But S.H.I.E.L.D. has a lot of secrets, and the ones at the heart of Project Insight could threaten everything they hold dear. And on top of that, there's a new player in this game: a mysterious yet strangely familiar assassin…





	1. The Lemurian Star

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, dear reader! Please note that this fic is [#3 in a series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/407635) which has a _lot_ of plot, so start here at your own risk. :D

Bucky Barnes isn’t particularly superstitious, but when he knows he’s about to head into a dangerous situation, there are two things he always tries to do first. One of them is sending a quick text to his sister Becca—never a big thing; maybe a photo of Clint’s dog that he’s been saving on his phone, or the latest stupid cat meme, or just a quick _hey, hope you’re having a good day._ But it has to be something, because she’s put up with a lot of his crap over the years, and if anything _did_ happen to him, he wants to go out knowing he’s recently made her smile at least once.

The other thing is calling his boyfriend to make sure he isn’t being a total fucking idiot.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve says, when he answers the phone, and Bucky can hear the warmth in his voice. But then he starts coughing, a deep, lung-rattling sound, and Bucky shuts his eyes and presses his metal hand against his temple. Steve has, for maybe the first time in his life, really been taking care of himself lately, keeping up with his meds and even getting somewhat toned from his martial arts training with Melinda May, and he’s been rewarded with a surprising run of good health. He’s going to be mad as hell that it couldn’t last for a few more days, which means it’s important that Bucky plays this exactly right.

“Hey, bae,” he says cheerfully. “You sound like shit.”

“Thanks,” Steve says dryly, choking off a final cough. “And ‘bae’? We’re doing that now?”

“I could change it up if you want. Would you rather be ‘sugar’ or ‘dollface’?”

“You know nobody in the 1940s really talked like that, right?” Steve takes a deep breath, with enough of a wheeze in it to make Bucky cringe. “And this is just my asthma playing up, by the way. I’m not getting sick.”

“I didn’t say you were, bae.”

“I can’t _be_ sick right now,” Steve clarifies. “I’m too busy.”

Experience has taught Bucky that when Steve has made up his mind to be stubborn, logic will just piss him off. He tries his conciliatory voice instead: “Well, you’ve only got one more final to get through—which you’re gonna ace, by the way—and then you can take a couple days and get some rest.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Steve sighs. “It’s gonna be a tough one. How can one exam count for half your grade, anyway? They don’t measure you on what you _know,_ just on what you can remember long enough to spit it back out on a test. If I’d had any idea that this country’s education system was so broken—”

“You punched Adolf Hitler in the face over two hundred times,” Bucky points out, before Steve can really get going. “You’re not gonna get beat by a test. I’m gonna turn on my phone when I get back in American airspace and look for the text that says you crushed it.”

“You have too much faith in me. But thanks.” Steve pauses. “I should be there.”

“Hey, no, don’t start with that stuff. We agreed you’ve gotta focus on school right now. Besides, this isn’t even an Avengers mission. It’d be a standard Clintasha job if Clint hadn’t jacked up his shoulder. I swear, sometimes I think he gets himself thrown in dumpsters on purpose just to get the medical leave.”

“What the hell is a Clintasha job?”

Bucky smiles. He still counts it as a little win every time he gets Steve to swear. “That’s Tony’s celebrity couple name for Clint and Natasha. You know, like Brangelina? I know they’re not a couple, but it’s like a work husband-work wife thing.”

“That sounded almost like English, but I’m not convinced,” Steve says. “And please tell me Tony doesn’t have some cutesy name for us.”

“Yeah, you didn’t know? We’re Stucky.”

 _“Stucky?”_ Steve repeats. “That’s horrible. Also, Buck Rogers was _right there_ and he went with a made-up word instead?”

“It’s a travesty,” Bucky agrees. “He dug his own grave, though. I’m gonna start calling Pepper and him Pepperony.”

Steve laughs. “See, that’s why I keep you around, Barnes,” he says. And then, seriously, “Be careful, okay?”

“I’m always careful. And _you_ take care of yourself, and remember the nebulizer is there if you need to use it.”

“Ugh. You know I won’t get any sleep tonight if I do.”

Bucky prides himself on being a great boyfriend, which is why he doesn’t point out that some people love to rattle on about how many lives those little tubes of liquid albuterol would have saved in 1928 until it’s time for them to _take_ their medicine, at which point they turn into stubborn assholes. “Tell you what,” he says instead, dropping his voice low, “I’ll make you a deal. If you do a breathing treatment, then when I get home, I’ll do something that’ll put you right to sleep.”

“Why wait? You can talk about how much you love Doctor Who from there.”

Bucky cracks up. “Punk,” he says, affectionately. “Hey, I gotta go. Don’t do anything stupid until I get back, okay?”

“How can I? You took all the stupid with you.” Steve takes another deep breath. “I love you, Buck.”

Bucky knows that if Natasha so much as glances in his direction right now, he’s never going to hear the end of the big sappy grin he’s wearing. He also kind of doesn’t care. “Love you too, Stevie. Talk soon,” he says, before he stashes the phone securely in his locker.

Then he picks up the matte-coated vibranium shield and gets ready to jump out of a plane.

 

“Five minutes to target, Cap,” Rumlow says, and Bucky nods, flicking on the little S.H.I.E.L.D. earbud and running his hands over the guns and knives on his belt one more time.

“Okay,” he says, “let’s hear the sitrep.”

“The target is a mobile satellite launch platform called the Lemurian Star,” Rumlow says. “They were sending up their last payload when pirates took them, ninety-three minutes ago.”

“Lemurian Star?” Bucky grimaces. “I don’t know what kind of name that’s supposed to be for a ship, but I’m telling you right now that if I get down there and find a bunch of those fucking singing animals from Madagascar, I’m out.”

“You’re a trip, Barnes,” Rumlow says, chuckling. “They’re asking for ransom. A billion and a half.”

“The fuck makes them think one ship is worth that?”

“The fact that the one ship belongs to S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Great. So let me guess, it’s not supposed to be where it is, and now we have to clean up Fury’s mess before there’s an international shitstorm about it?”

“I'm sure there’s a good reason,” Natasha says, coming up behind him.

“Sure, but you know what would be cool? Having all the fucking facts before we go in.”

“Relax,” Natasha says. “It’s not that complicated.”

“Says you. Do we at least know how many pirates we’re dealing with?”

“Twenty-five mercs, led by this guy,” Rumlow says, pulling up a photo on the viewscreen. “Georges Batroc. Ex-TGSE, Action Division. Before the French demobilized him, he had thirty-six kill missions. Guy’s got a rep for maximum casualties.”

“Wow, today just keeps getting better and better. Who are the hostages?”

“Mostly techs,” Rumlow says. “One officer, Jasper Sitwell.”

“Jeez, whose pet project is this satellite if it got a frigging desk jockey like Sitwell off his ass? Okay,” Bucky says, “here’s how it’s gonna go. I’m gonna sweep the deck for pirates, take out as many as I can. Natasha, you kill the engines and head to the rendezvous point. Brock, take your team aft, find the hostages, and get them to the lifeboats. And if you see Batroc, do not engage. Leave him for me.”

Rumlow nods. “S.T.R.I.K.E. team, gear up,” he says into his comm.

“You sure you want to go up against Batroc alone?” Natasha asks, raising an eyebrow, as they head toward the bay doors.

Bucky absolutely does, because if Batroc is half as bad as he sounds, then the only reasonable thing to do is send the guy with the super-serum after him. But he can’t say that here, so he shrugs and says, “My boyfriend’s sick and this asshole is the reason I’m over the Indian Ocean and not at home taking care of him, so I guess you could say I’m kind of spoiling for a fight.”

“Wait, Steve’s sick? Is he okay?”

“I dunno. He says it’s just his asthma flaring up, but that’s how it always starts with him. And even if it’s just a cold or something, I still want to be there, you know?”

“If you like him that much, maybe you should marry him.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “That was my endgame when I proposed, believe it or not.”

“I thought he proposed to you.”

“Beat me by like two minutes and he didn’t have a ring, so I win on a technicality.” Bucky’s ring is currently under his uniform, on the chain with his dog tags, for safety. “Secure channel seven.”

“Seven secure. So, have you set a date yet?”

“Not yet. Do me a favor and check my parachute.”

“You’ve checked it yourself at least four times.”

“I know, but I didn’t exactly love freefall _before_ that one time I was in a house that exploded and fell off a cliff. Hey, I got a question. Why isn’t your boyfriend here when he’s the one who can fly?”

Natasha just smiles inscrutably. “Coming up on the drop zone. You ready?”

“Don’t have much of a choice, do I? Guess I’ll see you down there.” He takes a deep breath, makes sure the shield is securely strapped to his arm, and jumps.

 

Watching the altimeter spin on his wrist never gets any less nerve-wracking, but Bucky’s parachute deploys perfectly, and once he’s no longer falling, everything else snaps back into focus. He shoots one pirate in the chest with his silenced M4 while he’s still ten feet overhead; by the time the guy’s buddy comes over to check out the noise of the body hitting the deck, Bucky has already cut the chute loose and is waiting to snap his neck with his metal arm before Pirate Number Two knows what hit him.

It’s not pretty. It also isn’t the way Captain America is supposed to operate. But Bucky hasn’t always been Captain America, and there are times when what the world really needs is a Winter Soldier.

 _Two down, twenty-three to go,_ he thinks, as he melts into the shadow of the wheelhouse.

The third pirate goes down easily enough, but the fourth one actually has a brain, and when he realizes what’s happening, he doesn’t even try to fight Bucky, just cuts and runs toward—shit—a fire alarm. Bucky whips a knife out of its sheath and pins the guy’s hand to the wall; he howls in pain before Bucky crosses the deck and punches him into submission, but it was enough to alert two more of the bad guys, who come running toward him from opposite sides.

 _Shit._ Bucky dives and slides like he’s stealing second base, and bullets ping off the shield. But then there are two soft thumps and the shooting stops, and when he looks, Natasha is drifting toward the deck under her own parachute, a gun in each hand. “Thanks,” he says.

“Don’t mention it.” She releases the buckles on her flight harness and falls into step beside him as they keep moving; this is something they’ve had a lot of practice with. “So why haven’t you two set a date yet? Steve getting cold feet?”

“Really, Nat? Ice jokes? Too soon.” Bucky rounds a corner and finds himself face to face with three more bad guys; he takes them out with a face-shattering shield bash, a throat punch, and a roundhouse to the solar plexus, respectively. “And if you must know, I’m the holdup, not him. I want to marry Steve, but I didn’t realize it was gonna be a whole big thing, you know? I mean, it’s supposed to be exciting, but—hang on—” Shield-bash guy is trying to get up again; Bucky kicks him in the stomach and leaves him whimpering on the deck while he finishes, “Standing at the front of a church with everybody I know watching me do vows? It freaks me out just thinking about it.”

“Weddings aren’t that bad, Barnes. Certainly not as bad as press conferences.”

“How the hell would you know? Three o’clock,” he says, whirling, and the shield spins out of his hand to bounce off another pirate. He comes in low behind it and bashes the guy hard enough in the chest that he won’t be getting up again for a while.

“What makes you think I’ve never had a wedding?” Natasha asks, zipping one of her wrist stingers into the face of Pirate Number—shit, Bucky wonders, does that make ten or eleven?

“Hold up, _what_ now? You were married?”

“You think I got the name Black Widow by swiping left on Tindr?”

“Oh, so this was when you worked for Russia.” They’re inside the boat now; Bucky rounds a corner, ducks a badly aimed blow, and knocks out a handful of pirate teeth. “Were you in love?”

“Not with him. So you definitely do want a church wedding? There’s a Unitarian church on Lexington that’s supposed to be nice.”

“How about you secure the engine room and then plan my wedding?”

“I’m multitasking!” But Natasha does peel off down a corridor, and Bucky leans against the wall and takes a moment to ground himself. He’s spent a lot of time in therapy over the last few years, and he’s got a lot of little tricks to deal with situations where it would be easy to trigger a flashback—and it’s a damn good thing he does, because he still finds himself needing them more often than he’d like. When he’s fighting, he’s fully absorbed in the tactics, too busy to dissociate; it’s the moments like this, the lulls, where things start to hit him, and he has to take a minute to re-focus.

The night air is cold, and even inside the ship, it smells like brine and metal. He feels the strap of the shield in his right hand, the hilt of a knife in his left—there’s no sense of texture in the metal fingers, but there’s a sense of pressure when they connect with anything, however lightly; that took a long time to get used to. He can see a green light blinking at the end of the corridor. Okay. He has some things to hang onto, to keep him in the moment. He’s ready.

He moves.

Three more pirates get dealt with, in the final sense, before Bucky hears Rumlow over the comms: “Targets acquired. S.T.R.I.K.E. in position. On my mark… three… two… one,” and there’s a burst of pops, a handful more pirates finished off in as many heartbeats. “Got ’em, Cap.”

“Good work, S.T.R.I.K.E. team,” Bucky says. “Do you see Batroc?”

“Not here.”

 _Shit._ “Hostiles are still in play. Get the hostages out of there.”

“Hostages in route to extraction,” Rumlow confirms. And then, “Romanoff missed the rendezvous point, Cap.”

“Widow, what’s your status?” Bucky says, and then, “Natasha! Status!” When she still doesn’t answer, he says, “Fuck. Okay, if you can hear me, stay put. I’m coming to y—”

Batroc comes out of nowhere, a flying kick that by all rights should knock Bucky to the ground. He thinks he’s got the element of surprise, but thanks to Bucky’s serum-enhanced hearing, he’s got just a little less than he knows, and Bucky gets the shield up and braces with his left arm; the blow knocks both of them to the ground, but he leans his weight into the fall, rolls, and springs back up again. Batroc tries another kick and then a surprisingly acrobatic spin, but Bucky trains with Natasha Romanoff, and mid-fight gymnastics don’t surprise him the way they used to. He rushes Batroc, perfectly willing to let him break his wrists on the shield if he wants to, and there’s a brief round of competing kicks and punches, none of which does any serious damage through his reinforced uniform or Batroc’s heavy protective gear. He shoves with the shield, not a graceful blow but a powerful one, but Batroc converts the motion into a series of impressive backflips, and suddenly they’re standing fifteen feet apart in a classic face-off.

It’s clear to both of them that Bucky has the advantage in a hand-to-hand fight, and Batroc wanted the room to maneuver, but clearly, there was something else he wanted here, too; he wanted a good look at his opponent, at Captain America. And when he gets it, he smiles, almost imperceptibly, with his fists raised and ready.

“<I thought you were more than just a shield,>” he says, in French.

Bucky takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders, planting his feet. Slowly, very slowly, he takes the shield and settles it into its harness on the back of his uniform, feeling the magnets catch and snap it into its holding position.

Then he draws his gun in one fluid motion and pulls the trigger three times, targeting the weakest point of Batroc’s body armor, the joint in the leg plates just above the knee. Batroc lets out an extremely satisfying yell when he goes down.

“Fuck you, asshole,” he says, kicks Batroc under the chin hard enough to make him flop back to the deck, and heads off to find Natasha.

 

“Well, this is awkward,” Natasha says, when he kicks open the door of the control room and finds her standing over the computer console, with her hand on a flash drive stuck in the USB port.

“What are you doing?” Bucky demands.

“Backing up the hard drive. It’s a good habit to get into.”

Bucky appreciates a snarky comeback as much as anybody, but he’s not in the mood. Batroc got some good hits in and he can already feel the bruises stiffening up under his uniform. “Come on, Natalia, cut me a break.” He steps around the console and looks at the screen, at the running download on the screen. “Are you trying to save S.H.I.E.L.D. intel when we’ve got hostages to evac?”

“Whatever I can get my hands on. And rescuing the hostages is your mission, not mine,” she says, pulling the flash drive out of its socket.

“Yeah? Well, _my_ mission could go sideways and get people killed because you’re in here instead of out there.”

“I think that’s overstating things,” Natasha says.

Which is when Batroc—who really is a tough son of a bitch to have crawled as far as the doorway with three bullets in him, Bucky has to give him that—lobs a grenade through the control room door.

Bucky bats the grenade back toward the door with his metal arm and it rolls into a corner, but he knows that’s not enough. He grabs Natasha and lunges, raising the shield so that when he crashes through the control room window, the vibranium takes the brunt of the impact. Broken glass flies everywhere, and Bucky feels a knife-sharp shard of glass slice through his right sleeve and bite into his right arm, but at least the wall under the window shields them from the blast of the grenade, which leaves little more than a smoking crater where the ship’s computers used to be.

“Okay,” Natasha says, panting slightly. “That one’s on me.”

“Fuckin’ A it is,” Bucky snaps. He doesn’t really mean it, though. He’s furious—he’s livid—but he knows the blame for this one doesn’t really fall to Natasha.

She was following orders. And Bucky knows whose orders they were.

 

“You know, I had a crazy idea that being Captain America would get me past all this need-to-know horseshit,” Bucky says, storming into Nick Fury’s office in the Triskelion. His right arm is in a sling, with two layers of stitches holding his bicep together, but that’s not even the part that pisses him off. “We’re lucky those hostages aren’t dead right now.”

Fury spins his chair around, regarding Bucky grimly with his one good eye. “I sent the best soldier in S.H.I.E.L.D. to make sure that didn’t happen.”

“Flattery isn’t gonna work on me this time, Fury. I know the only reason I’m on this job is because Barton is magnetically attracted to dumpsters.”

“You’re on this job,” Fury says, without changing expression, “because I believe this hijacking is tied to Project Winter Soldier.”

“Oh,” Bucky says, all of his snarkiness falling away. “Oh, shit.”

“Come with me,” Fury says, making it clear that this isn’t a request, and Bucky follows him to the elevator. “Insight Bay,” he tells the computer. “Authorization code: Fury, Nicholas J.”

The elevator jerks as it starts to move, and Bucky opens his mouth to tell Fury that he should really bring Stark in to do an upgrade, until he remembers that Tony made himself persona non grata with S.H.I.E.L.D. during the whole Mandarin mess. Bucky himself is trying not to hold grudges over the trouble it caused him personally, mostly because Steve had a worse time than he did and is somehow still managing to be kind to Tony about it.

“So,” he says, assuming that Fury wants to talk to him in true privacy. “What does a satellite launch have to do with the super-soldier serum?”

“That’s what I don’t know,” Fury says. “And that’s why I sent Agent Romanoff to obtain the files from the ship’s computer. Right now, all we know is that someone at S.H.I.E.L.D. secretly authorized testing a formula on men like yourself, who were part of the Winter Soldier project.”

“I’ve been wanting to ask,” Bucky begins.

“I followed up on the other men who were part of the program. Some of them re-integrated into civilian life, just like you did before you joined the Avengers. A handful are dead—some apparent suicides, mostly natural causes. Another dozen are currently working in various departments of S.H.I.E.L.D. They’re spread out across departments, hired over the course of two years.”

“Are you saying there’s no connection, or that someone’s trying to hide a connection?”

“What do you think?” Fury says, in a tone Bucky can’t read at all.

“Jesus, Fury, I don’t know. Spy stuff is Natasha’s department, not mine. If I was you, though, I’d keep an eye on the other soldiers from the Project. I knew some of those guys, and let me tell you, a few of them were scary motherfuckers _before_ they had bionic limbs and potential super-soldier abilities.”

Then the elevator doors open, and Bucky stares into an enormous bay that holds not just one, but three distinct, and massive, helicarriers.

“Yeah,” Fury says, when he’s stared for a while. “It’s a little bigger than a bionic limb.”

Bucky follows him out of the elevator, still staring. He’s been around SHIELD long enough to get used to things feeling a little science-fictional on occasion, but this is something else. “What is this?” he says.

“This,” Fury tells him, “is Project Insight. Three next-generation helicarriers synced to the network of targeting satellites we launched from the Lemurian Star. Their long-range precision guns can eliminate a thousand hostiles a minute. The satellites can read a terrorist's DNA before he steps outside his spider hole. We’re going to neutralize a lot of threats before they even happen.”

Bucky is still staring at the helicarriers, deeply disturbed by them and not quite sure why. As one of the guys who spent some time being held prisoner in one of those spider holes—as a guy who lost his left arm because there was no way for him to get rescued—there was a time when he would have cheered to see S.H.I.E.L.D. implementing something like this. But since then, he’s spent a lot of time hanging around Steve Rogers, who’s made him think hard about the big-picture stuff that it was easy to ignore as an Army sniper, following orders and racking up medals and kill shots. The work always seemed necessary at the time, and he still thinks a lot of it was, but… well, he was born too practical to ever be the kind of idealist that Steve is, but he knows exactly what Steve is going to say when he finds out about this, and he might not be wrong. “You know,” he says, “some people would say that punishing folks who haven’t done anything yet is a great way to make more criminals.”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. can’t afford to wait that long,” Fury says.

“Yeah, that’s fine unless S.H.I.E.L.D. is—” Bucky begins, and then he stops abruptly.

 _Unless S.H.I.E.L.D. is compromised,_ he was about to say. But isn’t that exactly what he’s been afraid of ever since he found out that scientists from S.H.I.E.L.D. had pumped him full of knockoff super-serum without his consent?

Bucky is a soldier. He’s _good_ at being a soldier. He thinks he’s even a decent Captain America. But a compromised S.H.I.E.L.D. in possession of three giant war machines is way, way above his pay grade. And at the end of the day, it almost doesn’t matter what he thinks. It’s not his decision, after all, and there’s going to be precious little he can do to stop what he sees in front of him from becoming a reality.

“Fury, this is fascinating and all,” he says, glancing down at his bandaged arm, “but it’s been a long day. If it’s all the same to you, I think I’d like to go home.”

Bucky gets it that not every alien attack or mutant lizard disaster is going to hit New York City just for his own personal convenience, but it’s still a pain in the ass that S.H.I.E.L.D. insisted on debriefing him in D.C. rather than New York. Even with a Quinjet at his disposal, it still takes him forever to get back to Midtown and Avengers Tower, and it’s after midnight when the elevator doors open onto the lobby of his own apartment.

Steve texted him a couple times while he was still in Medical, getting stitched up— **You were right, the test went fine,** the first one said, followed by, **I feel like death warmed over. Going home to crash** —so he isn’t surprised when he opens the door and finds the place dark and quiet. The nebulizer is out on the kitchen table, next to an empty albuterol capsule, which means Steve actually listened to him and gave himself a breathing treatment, which is a minor miracle. There’s also an empty mug, half a lemon, and an open bottle of Jameson that’s down a couple of shots, and Bucky grins to himself as he walks past it. Not that he’s knocking Sarah Rogers’ folk cure, but Steve is just so _Irish_ sometimes.

When he gets to the bedroom, he’s both pleased and disappointed to find that Steve is out cold, with his glasses tilted on his nose and his cheek resting on one hand, the other marking his spot in the book he’s been reading. He looks pale and unwell and his breathing is slightly labored, but at least his lungs aren’t making the rusty-hinge sound that Bucky associates with the fluorescent lights and hard plastic chairs of the Mount Sinai emergency room.

God, he wishes asthma had a face, so he could punch it.

Since that’s not an option, though, Bucky will do what he can to make Steve more comfortable. He carefully lifts off Steve’s glasses, sets them on the book—an eight-hundred-page biography of Alexander Hamilton which only Steve, of all people, would choose to read for _fun_ —and puts the book on the nightstand, after he makes a space for it by moving Steve’s hearing aid, his inhaler, a box of Band-Aids, and the roll of athletic tape he wraps his hands with before his kickboxing sessions with May. If that isn’t the distilled essence of Steve Rogers right there, Bucky doesn’t know what is.

In the bathroom, he shuts the door and strips his shirt off, wincing at the boot-shaped bruises that have started to blossom across his chest. He tells himself not to poke them, does anyway, and gets the predictable results that it hurts a lot and he feels stupid about it. The bandage the S.H.I.E.L.D. medic wrapped around his arm is greasy with medical goo, and it’s pulling uncomfortably at his stitches. He unwraps it, grabs fresh gauze and surgical tape from the medicine cabinet, reaches for the scissors, and drops them in the sink with a clatter that echoes through the otherwise silent apartment. “Shit,” he mutters, and sure enough, he hears the mattress creak as Steve sits up.

“That you, Buck?” he calls, and Bucky grimaces, fumbling with the gauze and the tape, which is now hopelessly stuck to the scissors, in a completely futile effort to cover up the gash before Steve can see it and get unnecessarily worked up. He hears a cough, then a thump, then some muffled grumbling as Steve kicks aside whatever he tripped over and opens the bathroom door. “Hey, sweetheart, what’s—” he begins, sleepily, and then he sees the wound and goes on full alert, grabbing Bucky’s arm and turning it over. “Jesus. You’re hurt.”

“Yeah, well, you oughta see the other guy.” Bucky tries to pull away, but considering that Steve doesn’t have a hand made of metal, he certainly has Bucky’s right arm in an iron grip. “It’s fine, Medical patched me up. What about you? Are you doing okay?”

“Yeah. I mean, I caught another damn cold and I’m not thrilled about that, but at least all my blood is on the inside. Okay, sit down,” he says, in his captain’s-orders voice. “I’m going to dress your arm first, and then I’ll get the ice packs. And please tell me they at least gave you some anti-inflammatories this time, because if they just stitched you up and let you go, I’m going to have _words_ with—What? What’s funny?”

“Nothing.” Bucky hooks his metal arm around Steve’s waist, pulling him close enough that he can rest his cheek against Steve’s. “It’s just, all I could think about was getting home so I could take care of you, and here you are, taking care of me.”

“Well, you’re clearly more pathetic than I am,” Steve says, with a shrug. “Besides, I can take care of myself.”

“I know, but you shouldn’t have to.”

“You shouldn’t have to patch yourself up when you come home looking like Sally from _The Nightmare Before Christmas_  either, and yet.”

“Hey,” Bucky says, pleased. “A+ pop culture reference, punk. You’re getting good at those.”

“I live under the same roof as Tony Stark. It’s basic self-defense.” Steve is ruthlessly efficient with the bandages, a skill he picked up in the War and has been honing in his paramedic training; the stitches disappear under clean white gauze. “And really, don’t fuss about me. I promise I’ll be fine by Friday.”

“Why? What’s Friday?”

“Well,” Steve says, “you’ve been so great while I’ve been busy with school, I figured I owed you something nice, and you were complaining that you never get to see anything but the Triskelion when you’re in D.C. for work, so I booked us a long weekend at that bed and breakfast we liked in Alexandria. I thought we could take the motorcycle down, maybe spend Saturday at the Air and Space Museum. If you want to,” he adds quickly, and hits Bucky with his _did I do okay_ look, arched eyebrows under a creased forehead. “I can cancel if you don’t.”

“Oh, gee, let me think about that for a minute. I get a road trip on the bike, a romantic getaway with my guy, _and_ a trip to space nerd heaven?” Bucky pulls him in for a hug, wrapping both arms around Steve’s waist and squeezing until Steve makes a sound that’s a combination of pleased, amused, and aggravated all at once. “Best boyfriend _ever.”_

“Out of all of space and time? Yeah, that’s probably valid,” Steve says, grinning. “There is something else I want to do this weekend, though.”

“What is it?” Bucky says warily. If this is going to involve a trek to another war memorial, or the Wall of Valor at the Triskelion, where Peggy Carter is the very first name on the monument—well, he’ll go along with it, but he’ll just have to brace himself for what it’ll do to Steve, that’s all. He really does get it—considering that Steve survived a war only to lose his entire world in what felt like a single day to him, it’s honestly a miracle that he’s as functional as he is—but the guy does seem to have a pathological need to make himself miserable sometimes, and Bucky doesn’t believe that all started after World War II did.

“I want us to make the guest list for the wedding.”

Bucky pulls back enough to stare at him. “You mean it? We’re really doing this? I mean, you’re ready now?”

“Yeah. I figure we need to know how many people we’re having before we pick a place, right? Hey, don’t look so excited. You’re the one who has to do all the work, since you’ve got actual non-Avengers to invite.”

Bucky frowns. Steve’s tone is deliberately light, but there’s an edge to it that tells him they’re on shaky ground here, something beyond the usual dark-humor-as-defense-mechanism that they’re both so good at. “Hey,” he says, “I know you wish your mom could be there, but you do know that my family _is_ your family now, right? And they don’t care that it’s not official yet, they’ve already adopted you in every way that matters. Hell, when I told Becca we were engaged, almost the first thing she said to me was that I better not screw this up and hurt you, or else her and the girls will turn on me like a pack of wolves.”

“Well, that’s… sweet, in a slightly terrifying way.” Steve gives him a thin smile. “I do love your family. And I love our friends. Guess I’m just afraid I’ll look around the church and not be able to see the people who _are_ there because I can only see who isn’t.”

“I get that,” Bucky says. “And it really does suck that you won’t have anybody who’s there just for you.” He considers for a minute, then says, “Hey, what about Kate? You’re inviting her, right?”

“You mean Katie? Clint’s archery friend?”

“No, Kate as in your study buddy from school, who you only saw every single day this semester.”

“I don’t know, Buck, I’ve been trying to keep school separate from home for a good reason. Our lives are complicated enough already.”

“Yeah, but a lot of the people at the wedding are only gonna know our civilian identities anyway, and for everybody else, we’ll make sure we tell them ix-nay on the whole Captain America thing. I mean, I’m definitely not gonna let my stupid cousin Greg find out that I put on a costume and fight robots and giant lizards for a living. I’d never hear the end of it.”

“That’s a good point. How are we gonna explain it to people when the Avengers show up at our wedding?”

“That part’s easy. I’ll say I work for S.H.I.E.L.D., but, like, in some boring desk job. One that’s important enough to the Avengers that it would be rude if they didn’t come to my wedding, but boring enough that nobody’ll ask me questions about it. Ooh, I got it! Steven Grant Rogers, meet James Barnes, Actuary of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Huh,” Steve says, grinning. “And what are we going to say if someone asks why Captain America is the only Avenger who hasn’t made an appearance?”

“Even easier. We’ll tell everybody that Cap used to be your boyfriend until you dumped his star-spangled ass for a hot actuary. He’s still got a massive crush on you, though,” Bucky says, sliding his right hand down Steve’s thigh. “Poor guy, he can’t keep his hands off you. It’s sad, really.”

He goes in for a kiss on the sensitive spot at the base of Steve’s throat, and Steve shoves him away with a sound between a laugh and a sigh. “Now I know that’s the serum talking, because otherwise you couldn’t possibly be in the mood right now. Not when I’m this sniffly and gross.”

“Right, because I couldn’t possibly just _like_ you and want to make you feel better. Besides, I’m trying to look out for your best interests here, Stevie. Sex is supposed to be great for your immune system.”

“How pure and selfless of you,” Steve says dryly. “Ask me again in the morning. Right now, I’m gonna get you those ice packs—”

“No, I’ll get the ice, you go back to bed. You won’t get better if you don’t sleep.”

“I slept for seventy years,” Steve says, pushing himself up and heading toward the kitchen. “I think I can handle being awake for a few more minutes.”

“That line is getting really old, Stevie,” Bucky calls after him.

“That’s appropriate,” Steve’s voice carries back down the hall. “I’m a senior citizen.”

Bucky lets out a snort of laughter, which is followed by one of those surges of affection that hit him out of nowhere sometimes—the ones where he loves Steve so much that it’s almost a physical ache in his chest, where he’d happily give up his remaining flesh arm if it would protect Steve from a world that’s been pretty consistently dumping on him since 1918. Momentarily overwhelmed, he almost misses Steve’s next question. “What?” he asks, following him into the kitchen.

“I said, other than however you got those cuts and bruises, did the mission go okay,” Steve repeats.

“Oh, yeah,” Bucky says. “Went off with hardly a hitch. Pirates defeated, hostages rescued, day saved. Notice how I’m not bragging at all about how I solo tanked the boss and took him out Indiana Jones style.”

“Once again, that really sounds like it’s supposed to be in English,” Steve says, his voice muffled by the open freezer door. “Sounds like it was pretty straightforward, then? No new supervillains to worry about or anything?”

“It says something about our lives that you can ask that in complete seriousness,” Bucky says.

He should tell Steve, he thinks. About the Lemurian Star and its possible connection to the super serum, about the fact that their suspected mole within S.H.I.E.L.D. seems like less of a long shot now and more of a sure thing, about the helicarriers and the predictive justice and the whole mess. But it’s late, and Steve is so clearly run down and exhausted, and Bucky’s whole _job_ as Captain America is to be a shield for the people he cares about. So he smiles, and takes the ice packs Steve hands him, and hugs him again, and tells him, “Nothing to worry about, Stevie. Everything is fine.”


	2. Movie Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating change! Because the world is crazy, and it feels like the most reasonable reaction right now is to write some Stucky fluff/smut.

“I come bearing gifts,” Tony announces, as he sweeps through the door of Steve and Bucky’s apartment and sets a stack of Stark-branded datapads on the coffee table. “Somebody needs to come over here and distribute them, though, because this,” he draws an imaginary line on the floor, “is as far as I go. Hey, Big Bright Green Anger Machine, there’s some new lab equipment in it for you if you give me your chair, because I’m not getting any closer to Patient Zero.”

“That’s hilarious, Tony,” Steve says, without looking up from his sketchpad. Honestly, he’s feeling a lot better—and if he’s coughing a lot, well, he has asthma, so what else is new?—but he knows he still sounds terrible, because Clint made a point of yelling “Bring out your dead!” when he barged in half an hour ago. (Apparently it’s a reference to yet another movie he hasn’t seen; Bucky tried to explain it to him, but he just ended up laughing so hard that he spilled his beer.) He doesn’t blame Tony for keeping his distance; having a fist-sized hole in your chest would make anybody a hypochondriac. Still, if Tony’s going to give him shit, he has to give it right back. It’s the principle of the thing. “If this whole genius inventor thing ever stops working for you, you can start your own radio show. The Tony Stark Comedy Hour.”

“Hey, Grandpa called me a genius! Jarvis, I hope you got a good recording of that,” Tony says, seating himself in the chair that Bruce has resignedly vacated.

“Bucky?” Steve says. “Sweetheart? Wake me up when Tony’s done being obnoxious, would you?”

“You really wanna sleep for another seventy years?” Bucky asks, dropping to the couch beside him and setting a bowl of popcorn on the coffee table. Then he holds up his metal hand for a fistbump, which Steve returns.

“You two are adorable,” Tony says. “It’s gonna make it that much harder when I have to destroy your brains to stop the zombie apocalypse. Which reminds me, why exactly have we all descended into the plague pit?”

“It came to my attention that Steve’s never seen an Indiana Jones movie, so we’re gonna fix that,” Bucky tells him. “I knew you wouldn’t want to miss it. He’s gonna have _so many opinions.”_

“Just promise me we’re following Star Wars rules,” Sam says. He and Natasha have claimed the other couch, which is technically further from Steve, but even Tony recognizes that asking Natasha to move is a bad idea.

“Only the first three, yeah, I’m not a monster. What’s different in the new datapads, Tones?” Bucky asks, reaching for the stack on the table.

“Retooled the OS, built in a few extra layers of security, improved the interface with Jarvis, and just for you, Brucey, the startup sound is ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.’”  

“You do know that if I threw you out one of these windows, no jury in the world would convict me,” says Bruce.

“I’m afraid that statement constitutes evidence of premeditation, sir,” Jarvis says apologetically, from the ceiling speakers. Bruce looks over at the others and shrugs, with a _win some, lose some_ expression.

“Okay, before we roll film, is everybody ready with their drink and their popcorn and their last bathroom break, since apparently one of us has to be the mom friend and actually ask that?” Sam says, looking hard at Clint.

 _Sorry, I don’t have my hearing aids in,_ Clint signs, and points at his ears, both of which are adorned with bright purple hearing aids, for added emphasis.

“Is my tea ready?” Steve asks.

“Shit, I forgot. I’ll get it for you, bae.” Bucky starts to get up, but Steve pulls him back down.

“I’ll get it. You’ll do it wrong anyway.”

 _“How can you tell?”_ Bucky demands, with the poor grace of someone who’s been losing the same argument for months. “It all goes in the same cup! It’s not physically possible to know if the milk went in first or last!”

“You put the milk in first?” Bruce says, eyes widening. “I’m sorry, Steve. I thought I was the biggest monster in the room.”

“Okay, see, Banner, this is where I honestly can’t tell if you’re fucking with me or not. Jarvis, buddy, can we get some science on this?” Bucky is saying, when Steve rounds the corner into the kitchen.

A moment later, Natasha follows him. “Hey,” she says.

“Hey. Want some tea?”

“Since you know how to make it properly, sure. Although I thought you’d be more of a throw-it-in-the-harbor guy.”

“Har-de-har-har, patriotism is hilarious,” Steve says dryly. “If you really want to know, I learned from Peggy. She always insisted there was a right way and a wrong way, even in the field, when all we had was powdered milk. Honestly, I couldn’t tell the difference, but the war took away so much, any little thing you could keep from before was a victory.”

“Oh,” Natasha says. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. She’s not a forbidden topic or anything.” Steve takes two mugs out of the cabinet and starts pouring. “I miss her, obviously. It wasn’t just that I loved her; she was also the first real friend I ever had. But she wasn’t afraid of death. She was afraid of not finishing the work. I try to respect her decision because that’s what she asked me to do. Besides, it’s like Sam says about his friend Riley: people can be gone, but as long as you remember them, they’re not lost. Not completely.” He glances at her and adds, “I’m guessing you know that feeling.”

“Not everybody likes to talk about their past, Steve.”

“Sorry,” Steve says. “I don’t mean to pry. The thing is, that first ten months or so after they woke me up, I didn’t really have anyone I could talk to. And when I left S.H.I.E.L.D., I thought it would be easy to go back to being on my own. I didn’t realize how wrong I’d been until Bucky dragged me into the Avengers. Didn’t know how much I needed to have people around who I could trust.”

Natasha looks hard at him, and for a minute, he thinks she’s actually going to take the opening he’s offering her. But then she hits him with her trademark inscrutable smile, and the moment is gone. “You’ve got two soldiers, two spies, and two mad scientists in your apartment right now. If your goal is to surround yourself with people you can trust, then there’s a chance you might be in the wrong business, Rogers.”

“I’d trust any one of you with my life,” Steve says. “I wouldn’t trust either Tony or Clint with my car keys, though.” That makes her laugh, so he decides to give this one more shot before he gives up: “How are things with you and Sam?”

“Fine. Why?”

“Bucky said you asked about our wedding plans. I wondered if you were making some of your own.”

“Us? No. I don’t think either of us is interested in being tied down,” she says, with a little laugh.

“Tied down? Is that what you think? Because, you know, I wouldn’t have proposed to Bucky if I thought marriage was some kind of burden.”

“You know he tells everyone that he proposed to you, right?”

“Well, he’s a liar. He had the idea first, but I _asked_ first, and that’s what counts.” Steve leans across the table, meeting her eyes. “You deserve to be happy too, Natasha.”

“What makes you think I’m not?”

“I didn’t say you weren’t. I said you deserve to be.”

Natasha shakes her head. “Every time I think I’ve got you figured out, you surprise me, Rogers.”

“I think I’m pretty straightforward.”

“That’s the surprising part.” She holds up her mug as if for a toast. “Here’s to happiness.”

“To happiness,” Steve says, clinking his mug against hers, and he means it.

 

He’s still thinking about the conversation hours later, when Bucky shuts the door behind Sam, who’s the last to leave, and starts gathering up the empty glasses from around the living room. When Steve gets up to help and he says, “No, Stevie, I got it,” for about the nine hundredth time this week, Steve just rolls his eyes and starts stacking up the popcorn bowls.

“I’ve been lying around for days, Buck. Let me pull my weight around here.”

“Not a chance.” Bucky reaches for the pile of dishes. “Give it, punk.”

“Make me, jerk,” Steve says, which is a bad call, because Bucky is perfectly willing to try. He gives the bowls a yank with his metal arm, but he manages to misjudge his own strength just enough to send the whole stack flying, scattering unpopped kernels everywhere.

“Aw, popcorn, no,” Bucky says, and it’s the look on his face that does it; Steve starts laughing and can’t stop, not even when his asthma kicks in and he starts coughing hard, with his breath coming in painful, wheezing gasps. Bucky fights it hard, at first annoyed and then concerned, but it isn’t long until he gives up and laughs too.

“You big dumb klutz,” Steve says, when he finally catches his breath.

“All muscles and no brains, that’s me.” Bucky throws his arms around him and presses his forehead against Steve’s. “How else would I be dumb enough to get mixed up with you?”

“Can’t imagine. You about ready for bed?”

“Yeah, let me just clean this up and—”

“Let the ’bots get it,” Steve says. “Sorry about the mess, Jarvis.”

“It’s to be expected, sir,” says Jarvis, in what Steve can only describe as a world-weary tone, as the little round cleaning robot scoots out from under the television.

Bucky frowns at it as it sets about vacuuming up the popcorn. “I don’t understand how the guy who was born during World War I isn’t more freaked out by the fact that robots clean our apartment.”

“Why would I be? Jarvis runs the whole building. I think I can trust him with a vacuum cleaner.”

“It’s not Jarvis I worry about, it’s Tony. No offense to your dad, J,” Bucky says toward the ceiling, “but I just _know_ he’s gonna snap and start building murderbots one of these days.”

“I wouldn’t put it past him, sir,” Jarvis says, before he dims the lights and switches over to his emergency-interruptions-only protocol for the night.

On nights when they’re both at home—no Avengers callouts, no urgent need for Captain America elsewhere in the world—the two of them have established a comfortable routine. Bucky brushes his teeth while Steve swallows his handful of evening pills, then Steve gets the sink while Bucky throws their clothes in the hamper and does his one last walk around the apartment— _not_ because he doesn’t trust Jarvis, he insists, but because it helps calm his own nerves before bed. Other than the occasional, “Hey, remind me to refill my Singulair before we go away this weekend,” or, “Where the fuck is my NASA shirt? I was gonna wear it to sleep in,” neither of them says much, because neither of them has to. And when Steve finally joins Bucky in their bed, Bucky reaches out and pulls him in close.

It took Steve a while to get on board with the whole spooning thing. First of all, there was Bucky’s metal arm to deal with: if he puts it across Steve’s body, it’s heavy and cold; if he puts it underneath, it’s slightly less comfortable than using a vibranium shield for a pillow. Putting an actual pillow between him and the arm solved that pretty quickly. But the real reason he didn’t like it at first is that every time they do this, it reminds him how physically small his body is now. He’s spent his whole life trying to prove that he _isn’t_ some fragile precious thing in need of protecting. But somewhere along the way, something shifted, and these days, falling asleep with his crooked back pressed up against Bucky’s broad chest doesn’t feel like weakness. It feels like a conscious decision to surrender, literally trusting Bucky to have his back, no matter what.

Of course, in the interests of brutal honesty, it didn’t _hurt_ matters when he discovered that Bucky’s crazy serum-induced metabolic rate means he puts out a lot of heat, because the serum-free version of Steve’s body was always cold even before he took permanent nerve damage from seven decades inside a glacier.

“Buck,” he says, “do you think other people are as happy as we are?”

“Nope,” Bucky says, snuggling closer. “Amputee superhero plus ninety-five-year-old college freshman is the magic formula for happiness. You thinking about Natasha?”

“How’d you know?”

“We’ve been together long enough to read each other’s minds.”

“Mm-hm. How’d you know, really?”

“I have super-soldier hearing and I overheard you talking to her in the kitchen.”

“Fair enough. You think they’ll be okay, her and Sam?”

“I think if anybody can figure out Natasha Romanoff, it’s Sam Wilson,” says Bucky. “And by the way, Stevie, if you want my theory, I don’t think she wants to get married. I think she’s trying to get us to let her be a bridesmaid.”

“Might be tricky, considering we’re not having a bride.”

“Doesn’t mean we can’t have a full wedding party if we want to. Hell, I might make her my best man if I hadn’t already asked Sam. There are no rules except the ones we make, right?”

“That’s a good point. And you know something else? You were half-right with that mind-reading business, because I know what you’re thinking about right this minute.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Steve rolls over, slips his hands under Bucky’s NASA T-shirt (which Bucky finally found in the drawer, exactly where it was supposed to be), and locks his mouth over Bucky’s for a long, slow kiss.

Between the beer and the buttered popcorn, Bucky tastes like a summer day at Coney Island, and if he wasn’t thinking about sex before, he certainly is now. After a second or two of surprise, he’s giving back as good as he gets, while his right palm cups Steve’s cheek and the cold metal fingers of his left hand slide down Steve’s spine. Steve shudders, and Bucky grins, but then he pauses. “You sure about this?”

“What’s wrong? Afraid you can’t keep up?”

“God, you’re such a rotten punk. No, I mean I know you feel like shit, even though you’ve always gotta pretend you don’t, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to do this just because I—”

Steve shuts him up with another kiss, harder this time, pushing him down flat on the bed. “James Buchanan Barnes,” he says, “if you fuss me out about my health when I’m doing my damnedest to get laid here, I will kick your ass, so help me. Now find something better to do with that mouth of yours.”

“Don’t have to ask me twice,” Bucky murmurs, already moving his lips down toward the sensitive spot over Steve’s collarbone.

Steve laughs, because it’s true. Bucky is insatiable. And as much as he’d love to think it’s _all_ because Bucky adores him, he’s not kidding himself: a lot of it is the serum. He remembers what it was like to go from having a body that used up most of its energy staying alive to having a body that was constantly ready for action (hell of a thing for a closeted Catholic virgin to go through, and it’s a damn good thing Peggy was less shy than he was about going after what she wanted, because otherwise he doesn’t know how he would have survived the winter of 1943). Still, Steve has never worried that Bucky will cheat. Bucky is the most loyal person he’s ever met—counting himself, and he used to be Captain America.

Also, Bucky is _great_ with that mouth of his. Steve figures he does okay in that department, but there’s this thing Bucky can do with his tongue, while somehow simultaneously working Steve out of various articles of clothing, that he could teach a goddamn graduate-level seminar on.

There’s a moment when they both come up for air—literally, in Steve’s case; good thing he doubled up on his inhaler earlier—and Bucky puts his mismatched arms around him. “So how do you want it?” he asks, with his mouth so close to Steve’s ear—his good ear, somehow Bucky always remembers about that—that his hot breath makes Steve shiver.

Steve slides a hand up the inside of Bucky’s thigh and squeezes. Since Bruce tweaked his workout plan to take advantage of his weird metabolic rate, Bucky has actually put on _more_ muscle there, much to the delight of at least three Avengers. Might as well put it to use. “Since you’re so worried about me being tired,” he says, rolling off Bucky and turning over, “I’m gonna let you do all the work this time.”

“Woe is me,” Bucky says, with an exaggerated sigh.

Steve grins, propping himself up on one elbow while Bucky leans over and rummages in the top drawer of the nightstand. “Marriage is all about compromise, Buck.”

“Really? I thought it was all about the fancy cake. Never mind, wedding’s off, gimme your ring back,” Bucky says, and then—and this is where being in love with Bucky Barnes is completely unfair—he ruins what would have been a really great comeback by sliding a slicked-up metal finger inside Steve, which drives everything else out of his mind completely.

Steve lets out a groan of pleasure and reaches back to tangle his fingers in Bucky’s hair. “God, that feels so good,” he says, and feels Bucky’s chest vibrate with laughter.

“I take it back about the robots. _This_ is the thing I can’t believe you don’t mind about the future.”

“Well, as you told me when I said I couldn’t believe you liked my skinny ass—” Steve begins, then promptly loses his train of thought when Bucky reaches down and grasps him with his other hand.

“—I said it was perfect because it was attached to you.” Bucky plants a kiss on the side of his neck. “Okay, punk, I see what you did there.”

 _It’s true,_ is what Steve fully intends to say. _I love your scars, because they mean you survived._ _I love your metal arm because it proves that no matter how much you lose, nothing will keep you down for long._ That’s what he _would_ say, if Bucky wasn’t sliding his right hand up and down in long, firm strokes that reduce him to something closer to helpless moaning than actual language. He pushes his hips back and digs his fingers into Bucky’s shoulder blade, just below the ridge of scar tissue where the metal connects, while Bucky pulls his hand back and slides inside him, moving in slow, deep thrusts that bring him right up to the edge of losing his goddamned _mind._ “Buck,” he says, and then, “Bucky—Bucky, _please,”_ and then Bucky makes that choked, helpless little sound that means he’s coming and Steve is right there with him, his whole body tightening, shuddering, and finally going limp with release.

When he comes back to himself, Bucky is lying half-across him, both arms tight around his chest, breath tickling the back of his neck. “I love you so much,” he says, his voice a quiet murmur, and Steve, for once just as happy to be breathless, catches both of Bucky’s hands in his and twines their fingers together.

“I love you too, bae,” he says, and feels Bucky’s breath catch in a laugh.

“You’ve been saving that one up for days, haven’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“Is it weird that I love you even more for shit like that?”

“A little,” Steve says.

“Okay.” Bucky’s voice is already starting to sound heavy and drowsy. “As long as we’re clear.”

“Hey.” Steve nudges his shoulder. “Wake up and cuddle me, you walking cliché. What, we fall asleep right after sex now, like boring old married people?”

“I can’t wait for us to be boring old married people,” Bucky mumbles, and Steve smiles in spite of himself.

“I can’t either,” he admits. “We will be soon, though. Nothing can stop us now.”

“Promise?” Bucky asks sleepily.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Of course, Bucky. I promise.”


	3. The Smithsonian

“Steve, I am so fucking sorry,” Bucky says. “I swear, I didn’t know this was—the last time I was here I was like seven years old, I don’t remember any of this being—listen, the art museum is right across the way. You love dragging me around art museums, right? Or we can just go walk around on the Mall or something, I don’t care, but you do _not_ have to put yourself through this to prove some kind of point.”

Steve has been staring at the gallery sign for a good thirty seconds now, startled into a rare silence, but just as Bucky is ready to start pleading his case again, he shakes his head. “Now that I know it’s here, I need to know what it says,” he says, and throws an obviously forced smile over his shoulder at Bucky. “Besides, who knows, Barnes? You might actually learn something.”

Bucky makes the sourest face he can manage, hoping it’ll keep Steve from noticing that his anxiety kicked into overdrive the second he saw the sign outside the exhibit. This isn’t about him, and he’s not going to let his stupid brain chemistry _make_ it be about him. “Okay, fine, but hold up a second,” he says, pulling off the ball cap he’s wearing—dark blue, with a white star and **U.S. ARMY** embroidered across the front—and jamming it down on Steve’s head.

Steve flinches. “What the hell, Buck?”

 _“Before and after photos,_ Steve,” Bucky says grimly. “Unless you think our friends at the shadowy government agency we work for are gonna be thrilled when someone tweets a picture and says how Young Steve Rogers’s identical twin is checking out the exhibit today.”

Steve shoots him the look that means he knows Bucky is right, but he desperately wants to start an argument about it anyway. It’s an expression Bucky has become intimately familiar with over the last year and a half. But he says, “Fine,” pulls the cap down, and squares his shoulders before he marches past the sign that says _Captain America: Symbol of Courage._

“Fuckin’ Smithsonian,” Bucky mutters, and follows him in.

 

 _“A symbol to the nation, a hero to the world,”_ a recorded voice intones over a loudspeaker in the first room, _“the story of Captain America is one of honor, bravery, and sacrifice.”_

“And jumping out of fucking airplanes,” Bucky mutters, just loud enough for Steve to hear. He’s not even going for a laugh; he just wants to remind Steve that he’s there, and Steve shoots him a look that’s equal parts grateful and annoyed, so it seems like it’s working. They walk past a mural of an unrecognizably beefy stranger with most of his face concealed by his customized helmet, standing in front of a waving American flag—which is laying it on a little thick, Bucky thinks, even for the Smithsonian—and stop when they see exactly what Bucky predicted: a wall with two blown-up photos, before and after. The first one recognizably his Stevie, in a plain white T-shirt and dog tags, squinting at something off in the distance, clearly oblivious to the camera. The second one… well, he’s probably seen the picture before, but now that he’s paying attention, he realizes that _holy shit_ doesn’t begin to cover it.

“Hey.” Steve jabs a bony elbow into his ribs, bringing him sharply back to reality. “What’s with you, Barnes? Never seen a picture of Captain America before?”

Okay, Bucky thinks. Steve is pissed off. He can work with that. He turns, with half a dozen wisecracks lined up—but then he sees Steve’s eyes and doesn’t have the heart to make any of them. “Tell you one thing,” he says, “I sure as hell wouldn’t’ve let myself fall for that guy.”

“What?”

“Well, look at him,” Bucky says. “Fuckin’ perfect specimen of American manhood. Can you imagine somebody like him with an asshole like me? Nah. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure he’d be a fantastic lay and everything—”

“I don’t know,” Steve says wryly. “A little bird told me he wasn’t very experienced in that area.”

“—But you’d feel like you had to be _on_ around that guy all the time,” Bucky says. “Like you’d have to pretend you were all brave and patriotic and shit when all you really wanted to do was crawl into a hole. And, I mean, that can be a good thing, especially in a fuckin’ war. Sometimes the only thing that keeps you going is when you have somebody you can’t stand to disappoint, you know? But for the long haul, I’ll take the skinny punk who’s seen me at my most fucked up and sticks around anyway.”

Steve shoots him a grateful look. “You know,” he says, “the fact is, that guy who impressed everybody so much was winging it most of the time. He was barely even a soldier, and then all of a sudden he was a hero. That mask they put him in… he never really got to take it off. He would’ve been a lot better off with someone around who saw through his bullshit and knew how to call him out on it.”

“Yeah? You think he would’ve listened to a smartass sniper telling him to quit jumping off every tall thing he could find?”

“No, he definitely wouldn’t have listened,” Steve says, “but he would’ve appreciated your concern,” and Bucky snorts as he follows Steve to the next display.

The exhibit isn’t crowded, but a handful of people have stopped in front of the next area. Steve waits for them to clear out before he moves ahead, and Bucky wonders if he realizes that he’s standing at attention, shoulders stiff, chin up. Then the tourist dad with the kid on his shoulders finally moves out of his way, and Bucky isn’t sure why his stomach knots up when he sees it.

It’s just costumes on mannequins—the really simple kind, just human silhouettes. That’s not so bad, right? If it had been waxworks or something, if Steve had walked in here and had to look at an approximation of the Howlies’ actual faces, it would’ve been a lot worse.

 _“Battle-tested, Captain America and his Howling Commandos quickly earned their stripes,”_ the voiceover informs them. _“Their mission: To defeat Hydra, the Nazi rogue science division.”_

“So they’re skipping over the chorus girl era,” Steve says.

Bucky wishes he could tell if that’s genuine snark or a defense mechanism, but he can’t, so he shrugs and points to a small screen that’s playing a video. “Nope,” he says. “They got a clip from the movie.”

“They didn’t,” Steve says, and Bucky grins.

“Ooh, look, a button you can push for sound. You wanna see if it plays the song?”

“Jesus Christ,” Steve says, grabbing Bucky’s metal hand (he’s got a flesh-colored silicone sleeve over it today, for anonymity’s sake) and pulling him away. Bucky does his best smirk, to hide the fact that he feels like he could pass out from relief. That was a risky play, but it worked beautifully; it got Steve away from the costumes before he could look at the blank-faced mannequins meant to represent his squad for too long, before he could start to get maudlin—and particularly before he could spend too much time on the one female model in the bunch.

He steals a glance at the suit at the head of the formation as they round the next corner. The shield is a painfully obvious replica—to him, at least, since he’s spent enough time with the real one to recognize that the sheen of the prop shield's metal is nothing like vibranium—but the costume is a little too battle-worn to be anything but the real deal. How did they get that, anyway? Bucky knows they took the now ridiculously oversized suit off Steve while they were thawing him out, but did some asshole actually pick it up off the floor and think, _Hey, I bet some museum would like to put this on display for the whole fuckin’ world?_ He’s going to give Fury an earful about controlling his people next time he’s at the Triskelion.

…And now he’s let himself get distracted and lost his boyfriend. Shit. He hurries forward, and almost walks right into Steve’s back, where Steve is standing, frozen, in front of a screen-printed glass wall.

 _A Fallen Comrade,_ the title reads, and Bucky thinks, _Fuuuuuck._

“ ‘Born in 1921, Margaret Elizabeth ‘Peggy’ Carter,’ ” Steve reads aloud, very softly, “ ‘was one of the most prominent agents of the Strategic Scientific Reserve during World War II. Carter came to prominence as a code-breaker at Bletchley Park before joining the SSR in 1940. As one of the SSR’s first female undercover agents, Carter was instrumental in recovering information that led directly to the liberation of Doctor Abraham Erskine’—oh, recovered information my ass. _She_ rescued him, Buck, not some anonymous SSR division.”

“She did?” Bucky says. Okay, he admits he hasn’t read up on her that much. He guesses he grew up knowing as much about Cap and Peggy and the Howling Commandos as any American kid—maybe a little more, being an Army brat whose dad had a lot of World War II books around the house—but researching her after he hooked up with Steve felt weirdly voyeuristic. Even skimming her Wikipedia page made him feel twitchy, like he was one step away from stalking his boyfriend’s ex on Facebook.

“They kept it off the books, because the SSR didn’t want anyone to know that a woman could do something a whole platoon of men couldn’t, I guess,” Steve says, with deep bitterness. “But yeah, she went in alone and got him out. She got a commendation. She _deserved_ a promotion and about six medals, but she told me she knew her value and the rest of it didn’t matter. It just… she…” Steve sighs. “She deserves to be more than a footnote in history.”

“She’s not a footnote,” Bucky says. “She’s—look, Stevie, look at the next line. ‘The success of her mission enabled the SSR to start Project Rebirth.’ That’s pretty definitive, I think. No Peggy Carter, no Captain America.”

“I guess.” Steve’s eyes skim down a little further, and he grimaces. “ ‘During the project, she met and befriended the frail Steve Rogers.’ Can’t argue with that, I guess. ‘In 1943, after Rogers' transformation into the only Allied Super Soldier, Carter joined Rogers’ hand-picked team, the Howling Commandos, as an intelligence officer and sharpshooter. Carter’s skills proved invaluable on many occasions as Rogers and his team destroyed Hydra bases and disrupted Nazi troop movements throughout the European Theater.’ Also true. ‘Carter was’—” He stops.

“It’s okay, Stevie,” Bucky says, but Steve shakes his head and makes himself read it off anyway, dogged, doing the thing he always does: trying to prove something to himself.

“ ‘Carter was the only Howling Commando to give her life in the line of duty.’ ”

It’s not like it’s news to either of them, but Bucky knows from experience that there’s a different kind of hurt to seeing it in black and white like that. So he waits, with one hand on Steve’s back, forcing himself to keep quiet and still until he knows which way Steve is going to go with this, and finally Steve turns to him, with that same stiff posture and set jaw from earlier. “You were right, Buck,” he says. “This was a bad idea. Let’s get out of here.”

“No,” Bucky says.

“No?”

“No,” Bucky reiterates, because he’s fucked if he’s going to stand here and watch Steve swallow his pain like he always does. He has an idea—it’s a long shot, but it’s better than not even trying. “I didn’t drive through all that fucking traffic on I-95 just to turn around without seeing the one thing I really wanted to see. So I’m going to look at it, with or without you, and then I’ll take your mopey ass back to the hotel.”

Steve’s mouth falls open in shock, but no words come out, thank God for small blessings, so Bucky sets off toward the escalator. By the time Steve catches up, he’s too winded from trying to match Bucky’s longer strides to tell him off, so all Bucky has to do is point at the exhibit. “That,” he says, “is my favorite thing in this museum. You know what it is?”

“Since I _can_ read,” Steve says, looking at the sign, “I’m gonna guess it’s a lunar la—” Then he stops, realizing. “This is a lunar lander? _This_ thing?”

“I know, it looks like it’s made out of tinfoil, doesn’t it? But yeah, that’s the real deal, Stevie.” This is a thing he does remember about his last trip to the Smithsonian, when _he_ was the bratty little kid up on his dad’s shoulders: he remembers his dad explaining to him that for all the TV shows and comic books he loved, the ones about aliens and rocket ships, this was the way people really got to outer space. (Of course, since then, certain people have flown their robot suits through wormholes into space and then never, ever, ever shut up about it again—and Bucky himself has been to Asgard, although he doesn’t feel like it really counts, considering he was semi-lucid for most of that trip and has no idea how much of what he remembers actually happened. But in terms of _deliberate_ human space travel, this is where it all started.) “And you know what’s really interesting about this?” he asks. “This never would have happened if Peggy Carter hadn’t been on that train with you.”

Steve turns to him, officially baffled. “What?”

“Okay, stay with me here,” Bucky says. “The two of you—sorry, the three of you, Jones was with you too, right?— you set out to catch Arnim Zola so you could stop the Red Skull, and that’s huge; if you hadn’t gotten the intel on those Hydra bases, the Allies would’ve lost the war. Only, there was a lot more to it than that. See, when the rumor got around that Zola had defected, that set this whole other thing in motion where this guy called Wernher von Braun and a bunch of other scientists basically followed his lead and surrendered to the Americans. They called it Operation… um… Operation Paperclip, I think? Something like that. So, basically, no Zola, no Paperclip; no Paperclip, no space race; no space race, no moon landing.”

“Okay,” Steve says, “that’s all very interesting, but—”

“The point is,” Bucky says, “I think you believe Peggy died to catch Zola, and he wasn’t worth it. And I’m not saying he was, but I _am_ saying Peggy didn’t just die to catch one guy, or even just to win the war. Peggy died so we could have a future where this,” he gestures at the lunar lander, “could happen. Where people could walk on the moon, Stevie. Now, I know nothing makes it better for you that you lost her, but don’t you think _she_ would’ve thought that was worth it?”

Steve is quiet for a long moment before he says, “I never would have thought about it like that.”

“That’s why you’re lucky to have me, dumbass. Now, do you actually wanna go get that coffee or do you want to see the rest of this museum? Because either of those things is a net win for me.”

“You know what?” Steve says, with a sudden grin. “I think I want to listen to you nerd out about every space travel-related artifact in this museum.”

“Okay. Just gimme a second first,” Bucky says, tilting his head at the restroom sign. “I’ll be right back.”

Steve nods and takes his little leatherbound notebook out of his jacket pocket. “While you do that, I’m gonna cross ‘moon landing’ off my list,” he says, then frowns at it. “Hey, how come someone put ‘hoax’ and a bunch of exclamation marks after it in parentheses?”

“Because all of our friends are assholes,” Bucky says. “I’ll explain later.”

 

In the bathroom, he leans against the wall, fumbles a pill bottle out of his own jacket pocket, and pops half an Ativan, which he swallows with water from the sink.

Why the hell is he so upset about this?

Objectively, he knows that what’s bothering him has very little to do with Peggy Carter. He’s pretty sure some of it is his screwy brain chemistry; when his anxiety decides to spike, half the battle is consciously realizing that it _is_ a chemical process, and that the world isn’t actually about to fall in on him. And he figures it’s okay if he worries about Steve; he does love the dumb punk, and it almost physically hurts to watch the way he bottles everything up all the time, trying to be strong when he doesn’t _have_ to. So, okay, those things are legitimate.

But what the fuck is wrong with him that he feels so threatened by the ghost of a woman who’s been dead for seventy years?

“Get it together, Barnes,” he hisses at his reflection in the mirror, through gritted teeth. “Steve needs you and you do not get to be an asshole about this.”

“You all right, son?” somebody asks, and Bucky jumps about a foot when he realizes there’s somebody standing behind him. The famous serum-enhanced hearing is not making such a good showing today. It’s yet another delightful feature of his stupid brain that he doesn’t relax when he sees that it’s a little old elderly man standing there; he relaxes when he sees that the guy is wearing a hat that says **WORLD WAR II VETERAN**.

“Sorry,” he says. “Little bit of PTSD.”

“Where’d you serve? Afghanistan?” the guy guesses.

“Yeah." Probably not in the way he's thinking, but yeah. “You?”

“All over Europe. I was at Omaha Beach, not that a kid like you would know that name.”

“Oh, I know it. That was some heavy shit,” Bucky says, sincerely. He kind of can’t resist, though: “Hey, you ever run into Captain America?”

“Run _into_ him?” The guy snorts. “Son, I once threw a tomato at the man.”

“What?” says Bucky.

 

“Would you _stop_ grinning at me like that?” Steve says. “Someday somebody’s gonna turn on you while you’re wearing the Captain America suit, and this is gonna get a whole lot less funny to you.”

“I don’t care. The mental picture of you using that stupid movie-prop shield to block tomatoes is everything I didn’t know I needed in my life. You know what I want to know, though? Where’d they get the tomatoes?”

“It was Italy, Buck, it’s not like there was a shortage of tomatoes.”

“Yeah, but did they just assume they were gonna hate your show and bring the tomatoes, or did they go get them during the musical number and come _back_ to throw them at you because they hated you so much?”

“You’re a jerk, Barnes.”

“Like this is a surprise to you at this point?” Bucky swings open the door to the bed and breakfast and waves. “Hey, Helen.”

“Hello, Bucky, Steven.” Helen, one of the owners of the B&B, is about sixty years old and took an immediate liking to the pair of them the first time they showed up. She has her feet up on the desk and she’s reading a mystery novel. “Did you boys have a nice time?”

“Yeah, all told, we had a pretty great day. Hit some really awful traffic on the way out of D.C., though,” Bucky tells her. “Some kind of big cop chase going on or something, had everything backed up for miles. Anyway, we’re just gonna stop at the room for a minute and then we’re going back out to get dinner. Hey,” he adds, straight-faced, “you know any good local Italian places?”

“I’ll draw you a map to the best place in town,” Helen tells him. “Steve, sweetie, are you all right?”

“Yeah, just—asthma, I’m fine.” Steve chokes off a cough and gives Bucky his _I can’t believe you_ glare.

“All right. Well, you call down if you need anything.”

“Thanks, Helen. Give our love to Violet,” Bucky says, throwing an arm around Steve as they head toward the stairs.

“So help me, Barnes, if you’re even thinking about throwing tomato sauce on me tonight,” Steve says.

“I’m not twelve years old, Steve. I can ask the kitchen for an actual tomato. Hey, how hungry are you? Do you want to go right back out again or—” Bucky breaks off, looking at the door of their room, puzzled.

“I don’t care. You’re the one who’s always hungr—what?” Steve says, when Bucky holds up his hand for silence.

“You didn’t leave a radio on or anything when we left, did you?”

Steve shakes his head, then freezes when he hears it too: Glenn Miller, playing “Moonlight Serenade.” It’s just odd enough that it’s swing music that it puts Bucky’s hackles up; it’s as if someone is sending them a message.

“Stevie,” he says, “get behind me, okay?”

He turns the door handle, eases it open, and leans in, metal arm up, ready to block anything that comes at him. Then his eyes adjust to the darkness, and he says, “Fury?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When you set out to write porn and you wind up researching the Space Race for a couple of hours.
> 
> I ~~stole~~ sourced much of the Peggy bio (with some obvious adjustments) from [this site.](http://marvelcinematicuniverse.wikia.com/wiki/Peggy_Carter)
> 
> You may be thinking it was either Tony or Clint who tried to troll Steve with the business about the moon landing being a hoax. You would be wrong; it was Natasha, all the way.
> 
> Someone asked me if I ever put a Stan Lee cameo in any of my works. WELL, I DO NOW.
> 
> Thanks, as always, to Robyngoodfellow for the beta and putting up with my throwing random questions at her at all hours.


	4. Fury

“So here’s a thing,” Bucky says, swinging the door open and walking into the room. “When we went on a romantic getaway, I don’t remember giving my boss a room key. I mean, I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure S.H.I.E.L.D. H.R. would frown on that.”

“Do you really think I’d need a key?” Fury is slumped in an armchair by the window, and he grunts as he shifts into a less awkward position. “My wife kicked me out,” he says.

“Didn’t know you were married, Nick,” Steve says, following Bucky in and shutting the door.

“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me,” Fury says.

“Don’t I know it,” Steve mutters. This is the man who pulled that ridiculous stunt on him when he first woke up, trying to make him think it was still 1945, like he was some kid who needed a comforting bedtime story before he could face a harsh reality; this is the man who messed around with the Tesseract, knowing full well he should’ve left it alone, and opened the door for Loki and the Chitauri. It’s not that Steve thinks he’s stupid—far from it; it’s an impossible job, protecting the world, and Fury doesn’t shy away from making the tough calls. Steve respects that a hell of a lot. But that doesn’t mean he has to _like_ the man. And Fury showing up here, when they’re supposed to be off duty… well, it’s probably not good news, to put it mildly. He’s guessing that Fury’s drummed up some new information on the Winter Soldier project, and that he wants to talk to Bucky about it immediately—but what’s urgent enough to warrant a personal visit and not urgent enough to call Bucky in to the Triskelion?

He flips on the light switch, and Fury winces, then reaches out to click off the lamp, but if he’s trying to hide another ugly truth from Steve, he’s too late. Steve’s eyes may not be the best, but that doesn’t mean he’s not observant, and Fury is covered in blood.

He squeezes Bucky’s arm, and Bucky shoots him a look that probably means something like _Yeah, Stevie, I know, I’m not a complete idiot._ But he keeps his hand there anyway, because he can feel the tension in Bucky’s muscles, tight as one of Clint’s bowstrings, even before Fury holds up his phone with a text typed on the screen.

**EARS EVERYWHERE**

_Fuck,_ Bucky mouths silently, and Steve meets his eyes and nods. Whatever is happening here, it’s going to be bad.

“I’m sorry to have to do this, but I had nowhere else to crash,” Fury says, while he types the next line, one-handed and awkward—there’s something wrong with his right arm, but he gets there in the end, and when he holds up his phone, Steve sucks in his breath with a sharp hiss.

**SHIELD COMPROMISED**

The only light in the room is coming in through the window, but even so, Steve can see that Bucky’s face has gone chalky pale. “Who else knows about—about your wife?” he asks.

“Just—” Fury holds up the phone one more time: **YOU AND ME.** “—My friends,” he finishes, pushing himself out of the chair and standing up.

He’s drawing a breath to say something else when the first shot rings out.

Bucky moves faster than Steve does, shoving Steve behind him and raising his metal arm to shield them both while he lunges to break Fury’s fall. There’s nothing Steve can do but drop flat while Bucky drags Fury away from the window, but the instant all three of them are out of the shooter’s line of sight, he yanks a blanket off the bed and crawls over to them.

“Get his phone,” he orders, running his hands over Fury’s dark clothes until he finds the entry wound— _there,_ upper left abdomen, and he doesn’t need his shiny new EMT training to know that’s one of the worst places to be hit. He presses the blanket over where he thinks the bleeding is worst and starts applying pressure. “Call 911,” he says. “Call—”

“Who?” Bucky demands. “S.H.I.E.L.D.? Jesus, is he—”

“Not on my watch,” Steve says grimly. “But he will be if—” He stops when he hears a sudden banging sound, as if someone is trying to kick in the door to the suite. “Tell me you brought a gun,” he whispers.

Bucky shakes his head, glancing toward his suitcase across the room, and Steve understands: all he has is the vibranium shield, concealed in a special zippered compartment in the lid. He’s poised to go for it when there’s another thump, followed by the sound of wood splintering as the flimsy lock gives.

“Captain Barnes?” says a voice—low, female. A blonde head comes into view, and Steve’s jaw drops.

“Kate?” he says.

Bucky, who was coiled up like a spring and ready to move, freezes. “Kate? As in study-buddy Kate?”

“Captain Barnes.” Kate steps into the room with a service pistol in her hands, and Steve stares at her, dumbstruck, as she says, “I’m Agent Thirteen of S.H.I.E.L.D. Special Service. I’m assigned to protect Steve Rogers.”

Protect him? Okay, completely aside from the insult factor, he quit S.H.I.E.L.D. and now they’re having him _tailed?_ “On whose orders?” he demands.

Kate glances at Fury, then flicks her eyes back to his face. “His,” she says, and grabs a radio from her belt. “Foxtrot is down. We need medics.”

“Do you have a 20 on the shooter?” a voice demands.

Bucky’s eyes meet Steve’s, then dart back to the suitcase, as if he’s asking for permission—and technically, Steve guesses he _is_ the ranking officer on the scene. He nods, and Bucky springs up, grabs the shield out of its case, and looks at Kate.

“Tell them I’m in pursuit,” he says, before he crashes through what’s left of the shattered window.

Fury moves weakly under his hands, and Steve says, “Lie still, Nick,” while Kate checks the pulse in his neck. Then he feels Fury slip something into his hand. It’s one of those little memory drives that people carry around these days. He reaches up, grabs Steve’s collar, and pulls him down, so he can speak into his good ear.

“Don’t—trust—anyone,” he says, before he falls back to the floor.

Steve looks across his limp body at Kate—if that’s her real name—and thinks, _Not likely to be a problem, Nick._ But after that, there’s nothing to do except keep pressure on the wound until the ambulance arrives.

 

Bucky tucks his knees under him, lands in the soft earth under the window, and starts to run.

The B&B is on a quiet side-street in a historic neighborhood, old houses built close together, little gardens and lots of trees. From the angle of the shot, the shooter had to be on the sloped roof of the house across the street, but a glance shows him that it’s empty now. The assassin is damn good, he’ll give them that. Didn’t take a shot on either of the witnesses; kept it clean, professional, no collateral damage. It’s what Bucky would’ve done. And in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, they’d be long gone before anybody tried to pursue. Bad luck for them that Bucky’s secret identity is extremely well-concealed; little did they know they were tangling with an Avenger who’s just stupid enough to try taking down a specialist on his own.

Even so, if he hadn’t caught a flash of movement—a sniper’s eyes alone wouldn’t be enough, but _enhanced_ eyes are—Bucky wouldn’t have any idea which way to go. As it is, a quick scan of the area gives him a flicker of someone running just a little ways east. That’s a stroke of luck; the lots open up in that direction, making it harder to disappear into a side yard or through an open gate. He pelts down the middle of the empty street, and just for a second, a black-clad form carrying a high-end sniper rifle comes into view, right before ducking into an alley between an antique store and a coffee shop.

The shooter has a head start, but Bucky has a vibranium shield that lets him pull a reckless but useful stunt. He doesn’t check his momentum at all as he rounds corners, just crashes into stuff and lets the shield take the hits, rebounding off the walls in a graceless but effective parkour. He rounds another corner and sees a figure dashing toward the entrance to a public park. They probably plan to shake him off beyond the treeline—a good plan with one fundamental flaw: Bucky is going to knock them senseless before they make it. He pulls back his arm and lets the shield fly in a beautiful smooth motion that he’s been practicing for over a year now, aiming straight for the back of the shooter’s head.

Then the shooter whirls around and catches it.

Bucky doesn’t stop, but he does stumble from sheer surprise. That shield is a heavy, solid piece of metal that packs a hell of a punch. It took him months to build up the bone conditioning he needed in his right hand before he could catch it on the rebound without pain, even with the special reinforced glove Tony made to go with his uniform. There’s no way some random mercenary should have the reflexes to make that catch, and if by some miracle they did, they should be flattened by the knee-buckling agony of half the bones in their hand shattering.

There’s no way in hell they ought to be able to throw it back.

Working on muscle memory—or the metal arm’s equivalent of it, anyway—Bucky snatches the shield out of the air left-handed, but surprise still knocks him back as much as physical force. There’s a split second where their eyes meet, and then the shooter spins and runs into the patchy darkness of the park. By the time Bucky can regroup enough to follow, the shooter is gone.

 

Steve is standing on the front steps of the B&B, watching the ambulance pull away, when he feels a tug on his arm: Bucky, pulling him away from the commotion and into the relative privacy of the little side garden. He’s winded and shaky, coming down from an adrenaline rush, but the first thing he does is wrap Steve up in his arms and whisper, “You okay?”

“Yeah. I don’t think we’re gonna be invited back to this B&B, though,” he says, and Bucky lets out a huff of breath against his hair. “Did you get the guy?”

“No. Got away.”

“Not your fault. He had a head start.”

“I know.” Bucky takes a deep breath. “The ambulance had the sirens on. That means Fury’s alive, right?”

“For now. It’s bad, Buck.”

“Yeah, I kind of figured that. Did you call the others, tell them about this?”

“No.” Steve hesitates. “Fury told me not to trust anyone.”

Bucky blinks. Then he glances around, making sure no one is listening, before he asks, “You think he meant the Avengers?”

“I don’t know what he meant.”

“You think he meant _me?”_

“No! God, no! He was obviously coming to you for help, not me. Look at me—I can’t protect anybody,” Steve says, and by the time he realizes that may not be the argument Bucky’s looking for, it’s too late to say _Of course I trust you, dumbass._ “Fury knew he could trust you because you went to him when you found out about the serum—you’re probably the reason he got suspicious of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the first place. The others, though… They wouldn’t necessarily have to decide to turn on us. Remember what Loki did to Clint?”

“I remember,” Bucky says. “We should still call them, though. They deserve to know.”

“You’re right. But we can’t let on that we suspect this is anything but some enemy of Fury’s, taking out a hit. If S.H.I.E.L.D. is really compromised... I can’t even imagine how bad it could be.”

“I can,” Bucky says. “Let’s go get the bike.”

 

Sam and Natasha show up ninety minutes into Fury’s surgery—must’ve borrowed a Quinjet, Bucky figures, or maybe the Stark Industries helicopter. Each of them has one of those cases Tony built for everybody on the team, made to conceal as much of their combat gear as possible—and halle-frickin’-lujah, Sam had the presence of mind to grab Bucky’s, too. The shield doesn’t fit in it, but Bucky’s uniform, broken-down rifle, sidearm, and knives all do, and he suddenly feels a lot less defenseless. “Thanks,” he says, pulling Sam in for a hug before he can resist; Natasha has already gone to the window to stand beside Steve, who’s staring, fixated, through the glass into the operating room.

The fact that Sam doesn’t bother to give him any grief about the hug is telling. “How bad is it?” he asks, after Bucky pulls away.

“You’d have to ask Steve, he’s the one who understood any of what the doctors were saying. But let’s just say when I had a gunshot wound like that, Thor figured it was bad enough to take me to Asgard to get me patched up. And Fury was hurt before that, I don’t know how bad.”

“Are you okay?” Sam asks, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Try that again with a little less conviction, B.”

“I can’t _not_ be fine right now, Sam. Steve’s gonna need me, just like Nat’s gonna need you.” He glances over at the window, where Steve is filling Natasha in, voice low and urgent. Steve might not love what Bucky’s about to do, but fuck it; he’s known Sam since they were both Army grunts, and Sam’s loyalty is to his friends, not to S.H.I.E.L.D. If this is a world where he can’t trust Sam Wilson, then it’s a world he doesn’t want to live in. “Sam, I gotta tell you something in confidence.”

Sam frowns, but he says, “Go ahead.”

“The person who shot Fury. Uh. Definitely enhanced. Caught the shield when I threw it. Yeah, I know. But there’s something else, too. I… I think I recognized them, Sam. I mean, they had a mask, I couldn’t see their face, but I think it was the same person who shot me last year.”

Sam shakes his head. “The Mandarin sent that guy, and the Mandarin’s dead.”

“Yeah, but what if we only _thought_ the Mandarin was the one who ordered that hit? What if somebody decided to take advantage of Tony’s fuckup to cover up the fact that a different organization wanted Captain America out of the picture?”

Sam frowns. “That’s a lot of speculation, B. Besides, you couldn’t give us any details on whoever shot you last year—what makes you sure it’s the same guy?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky says. “It’s more of an overall impression than any one thing. I know it sounds stupid, but the way they moved—the person I tangled with tonight walks like they’re too heavy for their body type. You know how long it took me to get used to the weight of the metal arm? They move like that. And, by the way, Sam—I never said it was a guy.”

“Shit,” Sam says, with feeling. “You’re thinking Red Room?”

“Hill got the ballistics a couple minutes ago. Three Soviet slugs, no rifling. Untraceable. It was hard not to think Red Room after I heard that.”

Sam is quiet for a minute before he asks, “How sure are you about this, B.?”

“I’m not sure about anything right now. And I don’t want to say anything to Nat until… until I’m sure there’s even something to say about it. I don’t—” Bucky is saying, when they’re interrupted by a sudden loud beeping sound from one of the machines in the operating room.

Bucky sprints to the window. Steve is standing stock-still, staring at the sudden commotion in the OR with a look of horror, and Natasha is gripping the tiled pane below the glass. “Defibrilator,” one of the surgeons yells, and Bucky hears Natasha whisper, “Don’t do this to me, Nick,” as the beeping gets louder.

“What happened?” Bucky asks, his voice sounding faint in his own ears. “They had the bullets out. I thought he was stable.”

Steve’s lips are moving, but he’s not answering. It takes Bucky a second to realize he’s praying, probably without even knowing he’s doing it. Times like this, Bucky wishes he’d paid more attention the handful of times his grandma dragged him to synagogue; he wishes he had something better than a vague hope that there’s a benevolent higher power out there, that he could maybe ask it for a favor. He puts his arm around Steve’s shoulders instead, pulling him close while they charge the defibrillator paddles, shock Fury once, then again, then a third time.

It’s bad, because Fury was supposed to be indestructible, and now the foundation the Avengers Initiative is built on is shaken; it’s worse because Natasha, who usually takes everything the world throws at her so easily, is visibly crumbling. But all Bucky can think about is the fact that Steve has just found a way to make a difference in the twenty-first century, to save lives without having to fight, and the very first time he tried to save someone, they aren’t going to make it. This is going to _kill_ him.

“What’s the time?” the surgeon asks, and Steve says, “No,” and Bucky’s heart breaks a little.

“1:03 A.M., Doctor.”

“Time of death, 1:03 A.M.,” the surgeon says, and Steve bloodies his knuckles on the window before Bucky can stop him.

 

Maria Hill offers them all a minute with Fury, before she escorts his body to the S.H.I.E.L.D. medical facility for an autopsy, but only Steve and Natasha take her up on it. Bucky has gone prowling for food and coffee—he got some dirty looks when he said he was starving, but Steve knows better than anybody that his serum-enhanced metabolism can only go so far without refueling—and Sam is asleep on a waiting room couch, so it’s just the two of them for the moment.

Well, the three of them, technically.

“Natasha,” Steve says, when the silence becomes too much to take. He has to be careful here: Natasha has been with S.H.I.E.L.D. for longer than any of the Avengers except Clint, and if S.H.I.E.L.D. has been infiltrated or corrupted somehow, logic dictates that the former KGB agent is the prime suspect, especially in light of Bucky’s Red Room theory. But it feels too obvious, too pat. And yeah, he knows Natasha is a superb actress, but he can’t find it in himself to believe this is anything but genuine grief. “Natasha,” he says again, and is reaching out to touch her shoulder when she spins around to face him.

“Why did Fury go to your hotel room?”

“I… I don’t know. We were close by, I guess.”

“A Quinjet could have gotten him to Avengers Tower in forty-five minutes. But he didn’t call me, or Clint, or anyone else who’s worked for him for years. He went to you. Why?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says again.

Natasha shakes her head. “You’re a terrible liar, Rogers,” she says, pushing past him, and Steve casts one last glance at what used to be Nicholas J. Fury before he follows her out.

Bucky is out in the hall, eating a snack cake from the vending machine in the mechanical way that means he’s not even tasting it, just resupplying his body. When Steve drops into the chair beside his, he holds out a cellophane packet and says, “Here. You gotta eat, too. You’re already anemic and we missed dinner.”

Steve’s not hungry, but it’s not worth fighting Bucky on this. He takes the food. “Huh,” he says flatly. “They still make Twinkies. Who knew.”

“They probably made these Twinkies before you went in the ice, but the vending machine’s busted, so, y’know, limited options.” He slumps against Steve. “God, I’m tired.”

Naturally, that’s when someone in S.H.I.E.L.D. tactical gear, a stranger to Steve, pokes his head around the corner. “Cap,” he says, “they want you at headquarters.”

Bucky turns his head and looks wearily at the guy. “Yeah, gimme a minute.”

“They want you now.”

“Gimme a fuckin’ _minute,_ Rumlow,” Bucky snarls.

“Jeez,” says the guy—Rumlow, presumably—holding up his hands in mock surrender. “I’ll wait outside.”

Steve gives Rumlow the once-over as he retreats. “Who’s that?”

“Brock Rumlow. Head of the S.T.R.I.K.E. team. Backs up Clint and Natasha sometimes. He’s kind of an asshole, but he’s a smart asshole who knows his job.”

“I don’t like him.”

“Well, you don’t exactly hire specialists for their sparkling personalities.”

“I’m going with you to S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Steve says, suddenly determined.

“No,” Bucky says. “That would be incredibly stupid, knowing—what we know.”

“And it’s better if we let them separate us?” Steve says, voice low.

“Yeah, it is, because if somebody comes at me, I don’t know if I can pro—” Bucky stops.

“What?” Steve says.

“Nothing.”

“You were gonna say you can’t protect me.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I don’t need protecting.”

“Yeah? How’s your hand?” Bucky says abruptly.

Steve takes a deep breath. “That’s a low blow, Buck.”

“If it keeps you safe, then I don’t care. This isn’t a back alley brawl, Steve. If S.H.I.E.L.D. is really compromised, then walking into the Triskelion today could be like walking into a war. Is that what you want?”

Steve closes his eyes, slowly, and counts to five before he opens them again. “It’s never been what I wanted, and you know it. But somebody killed Fury right in front of me, Buck. You’re the one who always says I’m as much an Avenger as the rest of you. Well, guess what? I’ve finally got something to avenge.”

Bucky looks at him long and hard, and Steve looks evenly back, and they both know who’s going to win this one a long time before Bucky says grudgingly, “Fine. Let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so looking forward to writing the elevator scene in this AU.


	5. Elevator

Agent Thirteen of S.H.I.E.L.D. Special Service is on her way out of the Triskelion when Steve and Bucky arrive. Her shoulders are slumped, but she straightens up when she sees them. “Captain,” she says to Bucky, and then, “Steve.”

“Classmate,” Steve says, and keeps walking, without turning his head.

“That was cold,” Bucky says, as they round a corner into the hallway that leads to Alexander Pierce’s office.

“So is pretending to be my friend while spying on me. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, Buck, but aside from you and the Avengers, it’s a little hard for me to find people with shared life experience. I trusted Kate, and she probably reported everything I said to her right back to S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“First off, her detail was protection, not surveillance,” Bucky says, keeping his voice carefully neutral. “She needed to be close to you to do her job, so she got close to you. Second, she was doing what she was assigned to do. You and I both did worse in the Army. If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at Fury for giving her the order.”

“I _am_ mad at Fury. I don’t have to pick one or the other.” Steve knows full well that he sounds petulant, but he figures he’s allowed, just this once. “I don’t understand how you can be so calm about this.”

“Calm? You think this is what calm looks like?” Bucky laughs in his nothing-is-funny way, running a hand through his hair. He changed into his uniform before he came here, but with his hair down and a day’s worth of stubble, he’s managing to look even more unkempt than Steve, who’s still got Fury’s blood on his shirt. “I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours and now I’ve gotta go see Alexander Pierce, of all the people on the planet I don’t want to talk to, and explain how Fury died in front of me and I couldn’t even catch the killer. But sure, Stevie, I’m completely fucking zen over here.”

Steve grimaces. He’d almost managed to forget that Bucky knows Pierce was in charge of the project that secretly gave him the serum, and Pierce can’t be allowed to suspect that he knows. “I’m sorry, Buck. I wasn’t thinking—”

“It’s fine. Let’s just get it over with.” Bucky pushes open the door and says, “Sir. You wanted to see me?”

“Ah, come in, Captain Barnes.” Alexander Pierce turns, and Steve sizes him up while he shakes Bucky’s hand. Good-looking guy for his age, expensive suit, quintessential politician on the outside—but Steve senses that there’s some steel in him, too. “I’d say it’s good to see you again, but we don’t tend to meet under the best circumstances, do we?”

“Since I’d just lost my left arm the last time I saw you,” Bucky says, dryly, “I guess that’s a fair assessment, sir.”

“And you brought Captain Rogers. Good.” Pierce crosses to Steve and holds out his hand, which Steve has no choice but to shake. “It’s an honor, Captain. My father served in the 101st.”

“Thank you, sir,” Steve says, following Bucky’s lead and falling into military mode. “But I’m not in the Army anymore. Just Steve is fine.”

“Just Steve, then.” Pierce looks at both of them, then steps behind his desk. “Captain Barnes, did Nick Fury ever tell you how he and I met?”

“He told me about the embassy in Bogota,” Bucky says. “I remember hearing about it on the news when it happened. Fury said the two of you were pretty good friends.”

“We were,” Pierce says. “Captain, why do you think Nick Fury came to you last night?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky says.

“You were on the Lemurian Star mission last week, weren’t you?”

“I was, sir. With Agent Romanoff and the S.T.R.I.K.E. team. Our op took down two dozen pirates.”

“Did you know Fury hired those pirates?”

Bucky blinks. “Why would he do that? It was a S.H.I.E.L.D. ship.”

“The prevailing theory is that the hijacking was a cover for the sale of classified intelligence. The sale went sour, and that led to Nick’s death.”

Bucky shakes his head. “I find that hard to believe, sir.”

“Why do you think we’re talking?” says Pierce. “I was told you had an encounter with the shooter.”

“I don’t know if I’d call it an encounter, sir. I just chased them until I lost them.”

“What can you tell me about the man who did this? Anything you can remember might help us—any detail at all.”

Bucky shakes his head. “Everything I know is in in the report I made to Commander Hill, sir. From the length and precision of the shot, it had to be a professional hit. Beyond that, the shooter had a mask and pretty generic tactical gear, it was dark, they had a head start—it was hard to be sure of anything under the circumstances.”

Pierce nods, then turns to Steve. “I understand you were the last person to see Nick Fury alive. I don’t think that’s an accident, and I don’t think you do either. So I’m going to ask again: why was he there?”

Steve hesitates. Then he says, “He told me not to trust anyone.”

“I wonder if that included him,” Pierce muses.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says. “Those were his last words. Will you excuse us? It’s been a long night.”

“Of course,” Pierce says. Then he says, “Steve, Captain—somebody murdered my friend and I’m gonna find out why. Anyone gets in my way, they’re gonna regret it. Anyone.”

“Understood,” Steve says, for both of them.

Bucky doesn’t say anything until they’re well out of earshot. Then he leans over and says, very quietly, “So Pierce is a lying liar who tells lies, right?”

“Absolutely,” Steve says. “But why?” Pierce is already one of the most powerful men in the country—he’s not only the Secretary of State but also the de facto head of S.H.I.E.L.D., and from everything Steve has heard, the White House trusts him implicitly. He’s supposed to be up for a seat on the World Security Council in a couple years. He has all the power a man could possibly ask for, and he doesn’t seem like the type who wants money or fame. So what could he be after?

“I got some thoughts,” Bucky says. “We can’t talk here, though. Think Sam and Nat will let us hitch a ride home in that Quinjet?”

“I don’t see why not,” Steve says. “Do you know why the others didn’t come with them?”

“Well, Thor’s obviously off doing space prince things,” Bucky says, ticking the names off on his metal fingers. “Tony and Pepper are in Shanghai on business, Bruce is doing some kind of science consulting gig in the Arctic, and Clint went out on assignment right before everything went to hell.”

“Really? Funny they didn’t send Nat with him. He doesn’t usually work alone if she’s available. Anyway, we need to swing by the hospital before we leave. I left something there that I need to pick up.”

“What’d you leave?” Bucky asks, as he reaches out to push the elevator button. When Steve doesn’t answer, he says, “Well, whatever it is, chances are it’s already gone. Can we just replace it when we get back to New York? I really want to go home.”

“We can’t. It’s important.” Steve shoots him a meaningful look.

“Fine, be a mysterious bastard.” Bucky jabs the elevator button with a metal finger. The doors slide open and they step in. “I don’t—” he’s starting to say, when somebody calls, “Hold the elevator!”

Bucky rolls his eyes, but Steve has pressed the door-open button out of habit before it occurs to him not to, and Rumlow shoulders his way in, with a couple of the regular S.T.R.I.K.E. guys behind him. “Cap,” he says, with a nod to Bucky, and then, eyeing Steve, “This is the boyfriend, huh? Didn’t know he had a S.H.I.E.L.D. clearance.”

“Steve Grant,” Steve says, stepping forward and holding out his hand. It’s the name on his driver’s license and his school I.D., and other than the Avengers, only a few people with the right security clearances are supposed to know it’s not his real one. If he’s going to live under an alias, he’s giving serious consideration to just going ahead and changing it to Barnes, but that’s another discussion he’s having to postpone this weekend. “I work in the New York field office. Tactics.”

“Huh,” Rumlow says, shaking Steve’s hand, because apparently he feels he has no choice. Then he adds, “I’m sorry about Fury, Cap. It was messed up, what happened to him.”

“Yeah, it was,” Bucky agrees wearily.

The doors open again, and a few more people shuffle on—all male, Steve notices, some in suits, some in the T-shirts and cargo pants that are the unofficial uniform of combat-ready field agents going on or off duty. It goes without saying that they’re all bigger than Steve, and the nearest bodies are blocking his view of the guys at the very front. Bucky is the one who gets a little claustrophobic when he’s surrounded, though, and he’s already unconsciously backed up until the shield strapped to his back is touching the glass at the back of the elevator.

It’s a good tactic, using that against him. They probably found it in his psych profile. And he’s probably _just_ distracted enough not to notice that one of the guys is sweating, and another one’s hand keeps going back to the stun gun strapped to his hip.

Steve squeezes Bucky’s arm, and Bucky glances at him and gives him a weak smile before he looks away. He isn’t getting it. Shit. Well, nothing for it but to do this himself.

“Before we get started,” he says, into the dead silence, “does anyone want to get out?”

That does it, all right. He feels Bucky snap to attention, right before the guy in front spins around and goes for his stun gun.

Steve dodges, because being small and quick has its advantages, and the stun gun sweeps past him; Bucky throws a punch at the guy with his metal arm while Steve punches the emergency stop button, then spins back and throws himself at Stun Gun. It’s surprise as much as timing that lets him catch the guy in mid-motion, knocking him off-balance; his head hits the elevator wall and Steve follows it with a brutal throat punch that May spent weeks drilling into him, one that’s all about pinpoint accuracy rather than strength. The guy goes down, gagging, but that leaves eight more, and six of them have rushed Bucky; the largest of them has an arm around Bucky’s throat. Bucky yells and lashes out with a sharp kick, and Steve hears an answering cry of pain as somebody’s kneecap pops, but one of the suits has whipped some kind of metal device out of his prop briefcase and hooked it around Bucky’s metal hand—some kind of magnetic restraint, judging from how Bucky fights the pull of it until his arm snaps back against the wall.

The shield hits the floor, and Steve goes low and ducks under another of Bucky’s kicks to grab it. Rumlow has another of the stun batons, and Bucky grunts when it catches him in the stomach, but he isn’t down yet; with one arm and two legs free, he’s still fighting. Only four guys are left now, and none of them is watching Steve. So Steve does what he’s always done best: he goes for the biggest of the S.T.R.I.K.E. guys, centering as much of his weight as he can behind the shield and charging at him. The guy goes off balance, and the second he does, Steve slaps the stun gun against his neck. The guy howls as the voltage hits him, and the other two glance away from Bucky for just a second, which is all Bucky needs to flip himself around and brace his boots against the elevator wall. The veins in his neck pop as he strains against the magnet, and then Steve has to turn his attention back to ducking blows left and right; one of the guys catches him a good one on the shoulder that knocks him sprawling.

Then Bucky flips himself down from the elevator wall, grabs both of them, and knocks their heads together with a thump of bone on bone. That leaves only one more opponent standing: Rumlow, who had the sense to back off when he realized Bucky was about to free himself. All three of them stand there, frozen, for a few pounding heartbeats, and then Rumlow raises his hands, each one holding a stun baton.

“Whoa, big guy,” he says, focused on Bucky, although his eyes have darted to the unexpected threat of Steve more than once. “I just want you to know, this isn’t personal—” and on the last word, he lunges, but Bucky is ready for him now. He grabs Rumlow with the metal arm and _throws_ him, hard, into the elevator’s ceiling, side-stepping as he falls to the ground.

Bucky kicks Rumlow in the side, just in case he was entertaining any stupid ideas about getting up again. “You know,” he says, “it feels pretty fucking personal.”

There’s a silence, filled only by Steve’s raspy breathing, until he breaks it to ask, “You still got that spare inhaler you were carrying for me?”

“Uh. Yeah.” Bucky thumbs open a pouch on his belt and hands Steve the little canister in its plastic shell. Then he punches the emergency override on the elevator doors—which slide open to reveal an entire S.T.R.I.K.E. team poised and ready in the hallway.

“Drop your weapons and put your hands in the air,” the leader shouts at them, apparently disregarding the fact that technically Steve and Bucky are the only two people around who _haven’t_ drawn a weapon yet. But Steve is still holding the shield, and he whirls, slamming the edge of it into what looks like a power box, behind a panel that got knocked loose in the fighting. The elevator drops and Bucky goes a little green, but it grinds to a halt maybe five stories above ground level, and Bucky grabs the door and uses his metal hand to pry it open a crack. They’re stopped halfway between floors, but he looks out, sees booted feet running down the upper hallway, and pulls Steve off to the side.

“Okay,” he says, “here’s the deal. I’m gonna surrender on the condition that they let you go.”

 _“What?”_ Steve says.

“It’s the only way, Stevie. An op this big has to involve orders from high up, probably from Pierce himself. You gotta get out and get to Tony. Tell him what went down, and he’ll use his government contacts to put pressure on S.H.I.E.L.D. to get me released. There’s no other way either of us is getting out of this one.”

“Yes, there is,” Steve says. He grabs Bucky’s metal hand, which is clenched into a fist, and presses the knuckles against the glass back of the elevator. “We’re gonna punch our way out.”

Bucky’s jaw drops. “You can’t mean what I think you mean.”

“I survived plenty of worse drops than this when I had the serum, which means you can, too. Look: you put the shield over your left arm, it breaks your fall, you break _my_ fall. Buck.” He stares into Bucky’s eyes and says, “Do you really think they’d let me go? We know too much, between us, and Pierce knows we won’t play ball. Even if the Avengers come looking for us later, it’s not gonna do much for us if we’re dead, or worse, locked up in the Raft.”

“The fuck is the Raft?”

“Later. Jesus Christ, Buck, you always say I’m the strategist. Well, this is my strategy to get both of us out of here alive. Do you trust me or don’t you?”

Bucky definitely looks sick now, and Steve is holding his breath, knowing he can’t possibly do this himself. But just then, someone from outside the elevator door shouts, “Give it up, Barnes, you got nowhere to go,” and Bucky, looking ready to scream, or sob, or worse, whips around and punches the glass hard enough to produce a spiderweb of cracks that go all the way through to the outside surface.

“Grab on,” he says, and Steve wraps his arms around Bucky’s chest, while Bucky positions the shield over his left arm and takes a deep breath. Then he jumps, and the glass shatters, carrying them both five stories down to the concrete below.

 

Steve has dreams about doing stuff like this, sometimes. Dreams where he’s back in his larger body—the one he still thinks of as his real body, even though he barely owned it for two years—and can trust his bones and muscles to stand up to all kinds of punishment. But now, lying on the ground with the breath knocked out of him, he doubts he’ll be having any more of those in the future.

“Stevie.” Bucky rolls away from him and gets up on his knees, gritting his teeth as he scans the sidewalk around them. Broken glass crunches as he gets to his feet. A few people screamed and scattered when they fell, but nobody seems to be pursuing them “You okay?”

Steve nods. Somehow, he finds enough breath in to say, “You?”

“Think so. C’mon. Bike’s this way.” Bucky starts to haul him to his feet—and it’s damn unfortunate that he grabs him by his left arm to do it, because Steve can’t catch himself before he gives a completely undignified yelp of pain. “You’re hurt,” he says, visibly unraveling.

“I think I broke my arm. Don’t look at me like that. It’s a hell of a lot better than getting disappeared by black ops.”

“Sure, assuming that’s all you did to yourself.” Bucky moves around to his right side to grab him and says, “You need a medic, Steve. You need a _team_ of medics.”

“Then it’s a good thing we’re going to a hospital.”

“For fuck’s sake, you are _not_ still thinking about whatever you left there. It’s not that important.”

“Fury thought it was,” Steve says. “It’s a flash drive. He gave it to me after he got shot. I stashed it at the hospital. Figured it wasn’t safe to bring it here.”

“A flash— _shit,”_ Bucky says. “I bet it’s whatever Natasha took off the Lemurian Star’s computer. Leave it to you to be mixed up with something that threatens the fate of the free world.” He keeps moving even as he grumbles, making his way toward the parking lot around the side of the building. “Okay. We’ll get your flash drive and then we’ll get the fuck out of D.C. and take _that_ to Tony, and then you and me are out of this and you’re on bed rest for like a month, capisce?”

“No arguments here,” Steve says. “I’m ready to be done with this mess once and for all.”

 

“You gotta be kidding me,” Jasper Sitwell says, when Barnes and Rogers go through the side of the elevator. He and his handpicked team watched in shock as the two of them took down the eight toughest field agents they could assemble on short notice, but until now, he thought he’d thought of everything. He had three different SWAT teams mobilized, ready to bring the two of them in if, by some bizarre chance, Rumlow failed to bring them in, but now they’re both getting up and staggering away, and there’s nobody on the outside of the Triskelion who can stop them fast enough.

“Should I call in a jet, sir?” one of the operators asks him.

“No,” Sitwell says. “Too noisy.” Morning rush hour in Washington, D.C. starts at 6:00 A.M., and the traffic copters will already be out; clearing the highways wouldn’t just be a logistical nightmare, it would be highly visible. If it was just one of them, he might risk it, spin some story about a rogue agent or a national security risk, but two guys on a bike, one clearly a noncombatant—no. Fortunately for him, he has somebody who can handle this quietly. He turns to the operator and says, “Send Hawkeye.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I had to rewatch a CA:TWS scene like sixty times to get this into shape. Appreciate my noble sacrifice! Appreciate it, I say!
> 
> Also, sorry I haven’t been responding to comments. Right now, my brain is all AGH AGH AGH about life in general and about being social in particular, but I really do love you all. ♥


	6. Hawkeye

Bucky ditches the motorcycle.

It kills him to do it, and not just because it means Becca was right and he should’ve gotten a real car like a fucking grownup. He _loves_ his bike. It’s a brand new Indian with a custom royal-blue paint job, the newest and sharpest-looking vehicle he’s ever owned, and he hasn’t even put ten thousand miles on it yet. But there’s simply no way Steve can ride passenger on it with a broken arm. (Sure, he _says_ he can hold on, but it’s not exactly without precedent for Steve to insist he’s fine right up until he passes out, and if he does that on the motorcycle, he’ll be hamburger meat on the asphalt.) So Bucky leaves the Indian in a gas station parking lot—he gives it a last little pat on the handlebars, knowing the best-case scenario is that he’ll eventually come back and rescue it from impound—and steals a safely anonymous silver Lexus with Virginia plates to use as their getaway vehicle.

“Can’t believe you got into this car without breaking a window,” Steve says, once they’re back on the highway.

“Life skills,” Bucky shrugs. “Becca used to lock her keys in her car all the damn time, and Youtube how-to’s are cheaper than locksmiths. The weird part is that _you_ knew how to hotwire it once I got it open.” If they make it out of this alive, he’s going to slay Tony with the story of Former Captain America walking Current Captain America through the process of mutilating an ignition switch. “You wanna tell me where Captain America learned how to steal a car?”

“Nazi Germany,” Steve says. “And we’re not stealing, we’re borrowing. Ease up on the steering wheel before you break it.”

He has a point. Bucky unclenches his metal fingers, then risks a slightly longer glance at Steve while they’re on a straightaway. He’s leaning back in the passenger seat with his self-diagnosed fractured ulna up on the armrest, and he’s keeping up his end of the banter pretty well, but his eyes are a million miles away. Bucky made him swallow one of the Vicodin he keeps on hand in case his shoulder acts up—thank God he threw their luggage on the bike before they left the B&B, because if they’re on the run, they can’t exactly hit the pharmacy and refill Steve’s inhaler—but his gut says physical pain isn’t the real problem. “Hey,” he says. “Talk to me, Stevie. Where’s your head at right now?”

“We’re on the run from the government of the country I went to war to protect, Buck. It should be pretty obvious what I’m thinking.”

Bucky feels his shoulders hunch, and forces them to relax. Steve didn’t mean it to sound like a rebuke, he knows that, but that isn’t the point; the point is, he needs Steve to not do that thing where he disappears into his own head. _Don’t leave me, Stevie, I need my best friend right now,_ he thinks, but what he says is, “Okay, so once we get to the hospital, where do we find this flash drive?”

“Remember that broken vending machine? A guy was there opening it up. I stuck the drive in the back without his noticing. It’s in the back, so we’re gonna need some quarters.”

Bucky turns his head and stares at him. “You bet the future of the free world on like five people not wanting a Snickers bar?”

“I was in a hurry and I had limited options,” Steve says, and Bucky is about to tell him how incredibly insane he is when the tire blows out.

Bucky grabs the wheel, no longer caring if his metal fingers bend it, but it’s too useless to try to stop the car from going into a skid. At least they weren’t going that fast, and the car is pulling in the right direction, off the road rather than left into four lanes of traffic; when he realizes that, he forces himself to stop fighting it and lets the car coast along the shoulder until it’s safe to hit the brakes.

“Fucking _fucking_ fuck,” he says, when the car finally stops. They’re well off the highway and into the grass, but by some miracle they’re in a relatively clear patch of roadside next to a thin strip of woods. “You okay, bae?”

“Yeah,” says Steve, who obviously isn’t. He’s gone chalky pale and his arm is cradled to his chest; all that jolting around probably hurt more than the initial break, but he doesn’t look any _more_ hurt than he was, at least. “Are you?”

“Yeah. Fucking piece-of-shit tire blew out. This is a brand new fucking car, for fuck’s sake,” Bucky says, punching the dashboard with his left hand. _“Fuck.”_

“Did that make you feel better?” Steve asks mildly.

“Actually, yeah, it kinda fuckin’ did.” Bucky leans back and closes his eyes, waiting for his heart to stop pounding. If he’d been going just a little faster, or if the car had spun out—okay, he can’t think about it. “I’m gonna go see if there’s a spare,” he says, opening the door. “Try not to do anything batshit insane until I get back, will y— _fuck.”_

It’s too late. Steve’s already out of the car, walking back to look at the ruined tire, and Bucky sees the moment his expression changes. “Get down!” he shouts, and Bucky, too well conditioned by years of combat _not_ to follow an order like that, hits the dirt behind the car just as an arrow—the twin to the broken one that’s stuck through the sidewall of the flat tire—thwacks into the fiberglass of the car’s bumper.

“Freeze, Barnes,” Clint’s voice orders from somewhere above them both. “You too, Rogers. Hands up, either of you makes a move I don’t like and I shoot the _other_ one, you got that?”

Bucky raises his hands, feeling sick, but Steve ignores the order and keeps his left arm cradled to his chest. “Clint,” he calls out, eyes skimming the treeline, “whatever S.H.I.E.L.D. told you, it was a lie.”

“So, no truth to the rumor that Barnes beat the snot out of Rumlow and the two of you are trying to cross state lines in a stolen vehicle, huh?”

“Okay, this looks bad,” Bucky mumbles, but he doesn’t even have the heart to mouth off properly. He’s not sure which is worse: knowing that he’s going to have to fight one of his best friends, or the fact that he’s already trying use what he knows about Clint’s strengths and weaknesses to figure out how to win. Because he loves Clint, he really does, but if it’s between him and Steve, it’s really not much of a choice at all.

“Listen, Clint,” Steve persists, “if you’ll just let me explain—”

“Shut up, Rogers,” Clint says, stepping out of the trees. His bow is in one hand, an arrow in the other, and it doesn’t particularly matter that he’s not aiming at either of them; he can still shoot Bucky dead before he clears half the distance between them, and all three of them know it. “This is how it’s gonna go down. I’m going to throw some cuffs over there,” he says, and drops the arrow on the ground, “and you’re going to put one set on Barnes and the other on yourself,” and he’s setting the bow down beside the arrow, “and nobody else has to get hurt,” and that’s when Bucky’s heart leaps, because now Clint is pointing to a little silver comm link clipped to his uniform and signing at them, fast and urgent. He spells out the first word, _S-I-T-W-E-L-L,_ and then, _LISTENING._

“And what if we decide we’d rather die than get brought in?” he demands, while he signs back, _HOW DID YOU FIND US?_

 _TRACKER ON YOUR SHIELD,_ Clint answers, while he says out loud, “Don’t be stupid, Barnes. We both know you’re not gonna pull any Bonnie and Clyde crap. You want to survive, and this is your best chance. Otherwise, how are you gonna get far enough off the grid that S.H.I.E.L.D. won’t find you?”

 _Fuck._ Steve’s shield, _the_ shield, is the one thing they knew he’ll never leave behind, no matter how dire things get—and Rumlow would’ve had plenty of access to it during prep for the Lemurian Star mission, while he was suiting up or checking his other equipment. _PLAN?_ he signs, while he says, “I’m not taking any deal that doesn’t involve letting Steve go as the first condition.”

“No,” Steve says, reflexively, but Bucky hardly hears him, because he’s busy watching Clint’s hands tell him, _HIT ME_.

Bucky doesn’t need to sign an answer back; his expression must say it all, because Clint nods _yes,_ emphatically. _MAKE IT LOOK GOOD,_ he signs, while he says, “They want you both to come in, but tell you what, if you cooperate, I’ll see what I can do,” and then he holds up his thumb and forefinger in an L and moves it to make a heart shape in the air.

Once he sees that, Bucky decides he isn’t going to insult Clint by asking if he’s sure about this. He also knows he’s never, ever going to be able to repay this. So when he throws his punch, he makes it as fast and merciful as he can. Clint told him once that his nose has been broken so many times, he barely feels it anymore, and Bucky hopes it’s true. It’s a showy injury, too; there’s a fair amount of blood, and he’ll probably have two black eyes for weeks, which he can point to if anybody dares to question his loyalty.

Once he’s sure Clint is breathing okay, Bucky murmurs, “I’m really sorry about this, buddy,” as he grabs the comm link off the front of Clint’s uniform. He crushes it in his metal hand, flings it off into the woods, and rifles through Clint’s pockets until he finds a set of car keys. “Stevie, you wanna see if you can find his ride?”

“Yeah.” Steve tromps off into the underbrush. By the time he locates the vehicle—an old and slightly dinged-up pickup truck waiting for them on an access road—Bucky has found the tracker: a tiny metal computer chip small enough to sit on his fingertip, tucked up under where the strap of the shield is riveted to the vibranium. He flicks the chip in the general direction of Clint’s ruined comm before he tosses their bags in the pickup and climbs into the driver’s seat.

“You sure there isn’t another tracker on this truck?” Steve asks, as he pulls away, and Bucky nods.

“Clint would’ve thought of that. I think that’s why he picked an old junker—he’s probably already set off one of Natasha’s little spy gadgets that would kill any computer chips. But we’ll switch cars again after we get this flash drive of yours, just in case.”

“What was that last sign?” Steve asks. “I didn’t know that one.”

“I didn’t either,” Bucky says, “but I can guess. You know how he gave us all name signs? I’m pretty sure that one stands for Laura.”

“Laura?”

“His girlfriend. He keeps it on the DL, but she also works for S.H.I.E.L.D., in Linguistics, I think. He was telling me he wasn’t worried about himself, he was thinking about somebody taking it out on her and her kids. Steve…” Bucky almost swerves off the road as the realization hits him. “Oh, God, Stevie, what if they go after my _sisters?”_

“Bucky. _Bucky,”_ Steve says. “Bucky, pull over,” and Bucky does, right off the road he just pulled onto, barely missing the ditch. He doesn’t realize he’s halfway into a full-blown panic attack until Steve says, “Buck, you gotta breathe, okay? Hey, look at me. Your sisters are going to be fine.”

“You can’t know that. You can’t know S.H.I.E.L.D. won’t come after them.” Bucky puts his elbows on the steering wheel and twists both hands in his hair. God, it’s one thing for him to be in danger, but if he’s brought this down on the girls, or worse, on Bec’s _kids_ —

“No, I can’t. Not for sure,” Steve admits, and not for the first time, Bucky wishes he wasn’t always so fucking honest. “But it’s incredibly unlikely. Laura’s part of S.H.I.E.L.D.; that makes her an easy target. Your sisters are civilians. It’s a completely different situation.”

“Easy for you to say. They’re not your—”

“Not my family,” Steve finishes for him, in that flat tone that usually means he’s clamping down hard on some inconvenient emotion.

“Not your _responsibility_ , and don’t you dare take that personally. I meant it when I said they’re your family now, but I’m the one whose fuckups can get them hurt.” At least sheer annoyance has managed to distract Bucky somewhat from the outright dread he felt a minute ago. He gulps a few more breaths, and Steve’s blue eyes go soft and sad again.

“It is my responsibility, you know,” he says. “You wouldn’t have picked up the shield if I hadn’t asked you to.”

“Okay, could you please just _not_ with the weight-of-the-world stuff right now?” Bucky says, much too sharply. Yeah, it makes him a hypocrite, but sometimes the places where he and Steve are too much alike are harder to deal with than the ones where they don’t see eye to eye at all.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, and it’s the last thing either of them says for several minutes, while the sound of Bucky’s ragged breathing fills the cabin of the truck. Then he says, “Do you need to take something for—”

“No, I do not need to take something for my fucking anxiety,” Bucky snaps, reaching for the gearshift. He knows he’s being unreasonable, and part of him wants Steve to call him on it, so he can start yelling about how he doesn’t even know what reasonable would look like when he’s sitting in his second stolen vehicle of the day with spatters of a friend’s blood on his metal knuckles, on the run from a division of the U.S. government that usually pays him really well to do the kind of thing they’re now hunting him down for. He’s exhausted and fraying around the edges and even though Steve is only separated from him by the width of a truck cabin, somehow he still feels very much alone, like this whole thing is opening up a gulf between the two of them that he doesn’t know how to close.

What he wouldn’t give for some fucking ruby slippers right about now, because what he wants more than anything else in the world is to just go home. But that’s not an option, so he points the truck back toward the hospital.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who haven’t heard this yet, there was supposed to be a Cap-vs-Hawkeye confrontation in CA:TWS (but Hawkeye throws the fight and warns Steve he’s being tracked). It was cut, probably due to a conflict with Renner’s schedule. So I can’t claim credit for the idea but I did have fun figuring out how Clint would go about ambushing Captain America, and I’m particularly pleased that I got to have Deaf!Clint using ASL to do it.
> 
> Also, one of my headcanons is that Clint and Laura Barton met during the first Thor movie because she was the person Coulson called in from Linguistics. Someday I’ll write them a meet-cute.
> 
> I may have gone a smidge overboard with the swearing in this chapter. Bucky and I have had a long week, and this is not a very uplifting or Christmassy update, but I promise we are heading toward a reasonably happy ending (though it may take a hundred thousand words or so to get there).


	7. Agent 13

Sharon Carter prepares carefully on the day she’s due to make contact with her target. She’s got a good cover going: a stack of textbooks, a laptop bag, and a fresh new student ID card in the name of Katherine Brubaker. She’s also got a concealed-carry permit, a S.H.I.E.L.D. badge, a masters’ degree in criminology, a G4 rank in Krav Maga, and six years of experience in the field, four in Boston and two in New York, including her recent promotion to S.H.I.E.L.D. Special Service.

In light of her extensive training, Fury was surprised when she accepted this assignment without any grumbling. “You’re not going to tell me you’re wildly overqualified for a babysitting job?” he asked her, and she shrugged. She’s the junior member of the department, after all, and it’s not the first time she’s had to work a few crap assignments to prove herself before she gets a chance to really shine.

Besides, she can’t pretend she isn’t a _little_ interested to meet the original Captain America.

She times it carefully, following him closely enough that she won’t lose him, but far enough back that he won’t spot her too early and catch on that she’s been tailing him since he left Avengers Tower. He has enough money to take a private car if he wants to, much less a cab, so it’s interesting that he chooses the subway and the three-block walk that follows it. He has a notebook, and he scribbles in it for part of the ride, but mostly he keeps his head up, looking around, watching the people. It’s not until he’s getting off the train that she catches a glimpse of the page and realizes he’s been sketching, quick little face studies of some of the other passengers: a tattooed Latino kid in a hoodie, a wide-eyed toddler, an elderly woman with a wrinkled face and a furiously grumpy expression.

No wonder Aunt Peggy liked this guy.

Since Fury insists this is just a routine precaution—and if she wonders what’s changed that makes a protection detail necessary now, when Rogers has been working for the Avengers for the better part of a year, she knows enough to keep the question to herself—Sharon is free to wait for the perfect moment to make contact. She’s tailed him all the way across campus, and she’s heading toward a seat near him in the lecture hall—he’s in the second row; she’s got her eye on a spot in the third—when she sees a young woman, a kid really, slide into the seat next to him. She looks Rogers up and down and clearly likes what she sees, because she says something to him, and Rogers smiles distantly and replies. Sharon can’t tell yet if he’s distracted or nervous or just oblivious, but she closes the gap between them in time to hear the girl ask, “—your first class with Professor Fikry?”

“First class in college at all, actually,” Rogers says, and he _is_ distracted, spreading out his textbook and his notebook on his desk, totally oblivious to the fact that he’s being flirted with. “Well, I mean, I took a few art classes before, but I guess that doesn’t really count.”

“Oh, did your high school have an early college program?” the girl asks, in total innocence.

Rogers turns and meets her eyes, and Sharon gets her first glimpse of the weary old soul behind that baby face—and at the same time, a flash of the famous Captain America temper. “I am literally one _hundred_ years old,” he snaps, and the girl starts, draws back, then scoops up her books and mumbles something about finding a seat where she can see the board better, then beats a hasty retreat. “Wait, I’m sorry,” Rogers says, belatedly realizing he’s been rude, but the girl is already gone—and Sharon, seeing her opportunity, slides into the seat the kid has just vacated.

“First day and already making friends?” she says, and Rogers visibly deflates.

“I should apologize to her. I can’t believe I was so rude.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” Sharon says. “She had one of those Twilight books in her bag. Give it a couple months, and she’ll be telling all her friends the story of the one time she met a real, actual vampire.”

Rogers allows himself a faint smile. “I will tell her I’m sorry, though,” he says. “The high school thing just threw me off. God, that feels like a lifetime ago. About four lifetimes ago, really.”

“So how old are you actually?” Sharon asks, with a grin. “Because I wouldn’t have put you at a day past eighty-five, myself.”

“Uh,” Rogers says, looking even more embarrassed now. “Twenty-eight.”

“I’m twenty-six,” Sharon says. “And you have no idea how glad I am to find somebody else in this class who isn’t fresh out of high school. Are you also changing careers?”

“Yeah,” Rogers says. She can see him sizing her up, deciding whether to trust her, and how much. “I had this government job,” he finally expands. “It was okay, but I wanted to help people in a more direct way, I guess. Finally decided if I wanted to make a change, it was now or never.”

“I know what you mean. It’s not easy going back to school. It’s a little hard to feel like you have much in common with these kids after a few years out in the real world, right?” She holds out her hand. “I’m Kate.”

“I’m Steve,” he says, shaking it.

“Well, Steve, maybe extremely old people like us should stick together. Would you like to get a coffee after class and complain about the youth of today?”

“Um, before we go any further, you should know I have a boyfriend,” he says, and then his cheeks go bright pink. “I, uh—”

 _You don’t usually out yourself to total strangers,_ Sharon guesses. “So do I,” she says. “He doesn’t mind if I make friends, though.”

“I’m sorry.” Rogers is blushing even redder now. It’s kind of adorable. “I shouldn’t have assumed—I mean, of course you weren’t—obviously, I’m not exactly a—I guess I’m a little out of practice.”

“With flirting?”

“With people,” he says wryly, and she laughs, and that’s as far as they get before the professor breezes in and the class starts.

But he does buy her a coffee afterward—“Even though it’s not a date?” she asks. “Especially because it’s not a date,” he says—and he buys her another one the next day, and the day after that, before she insists on paying her own way. She can’t tell him that she’s expensing it all to S.H.I.E.L.D., but he hasn’t exactly volunteered the information that he’s the hero of Project Rebirth, so she figures they’re about even.

By the end of the first week, she’s encouraging him to check out the on-campus LGBT support group. And he does—he doesn’t think he’ll go back, he says, he’s not much of a joiner, but he does admit that maybe he has more in common with these kids than he figured he would. By the middle of the second week, he’s showing her photos of Barnes he’s snapped on his phone—always tender little moments that don’t give a hint of his real occupation: Barnes sitting on a window seat with a coffee cup and looking out over New York with a soft expression, for instance, or Barnes with an arm around a friend’s dog, both of them wearing identical Christmas reindeer antlers. A few weeks after that, he tells her, tentatively, almost shyly, that he and Barnes are engaged, and she congratulates him with genuine warmth. And that’s about the same time that she realizes she’s no longer pretending to be friends with Steve Grant, college student, in order to get close to Steve Rogers, person of interest to S.H.I.E.L.D.; she really has started to care about him, and wants him to be as happy as he possibly can be.

She never forgets her responsibilities, though, even if this is just a babysitting assignment. Every time she’s with him, she stays on the alert for trouble, scanning each room carefully for anyone lingering too long or showing too much interest in Steven Grant Rogers—besides herself, of course. And when she has to break cover in the worst way possible, she sees the hurt on his face, and tells herself that she’s just doing her job, and that she’s not sorry.

 

“Eyes here,” says Jasper Sitwell, in his sit-up-and-take-notice voice, and Sharon, like everyone else in the room, turns and looks at him—or rather, at the screen behind him, which is displaying a pair of photographs. One of them is James Buchanan Barnes in his Captain America outfit, with his helmet and headgear hiding his face. A chill goes through her when she realizes she’s seen the second photo before; it’s Barnes in civilian clothes, sitting on a bench in Central Park, with an arm around Rogers. She remembers the story he told her about stopping some random stranger to get them to take it so that Barnes could send it to his extended family when he sent out an email announcing their engagement.

She sees two people deeply in love, and her stomach bottoms out when she realizes that everyone else in the room is looking at a pair of targets.

“Whatever your op is,” Sitwell says, “bury it. This is Level One. We’re on the hunt for two fugitives: this man,” he points to Steve, “going by the alias Steven Grant, and this one,” and he points to Barnes, “James Buchanan Barnes, who some of you know as Captain America.” There’s a sudden outburst in the control room, and Sitwell barks, “This is a direct order from the highest levels, people! Contact the DOT—all traffic lights in the district go red. Shut all runways at BWI, IAD, and Reagan. All security cameras in the city go through this monitor, right here. Scan all open sources. Phones, computers, PDAs, whatever. If someone Tweets about these two, I want to know it.”

Sharon grits her teeth, wondering exactly how much trouble she’s about to be in. Everybody knows she was one of Fury’s protégés, and even though she thinks he should be seen as a martyr, somehow, in the last twelve hours, he’s become persona non grata in the Triskelion; there’s a rumor going around about a coverup, about his death being the result of some kind of shady dealings finally catching up to him. She doesn’t believe it for a second and can’t believe anyone else who knew him would either, but that’s the problem; most of the people at S.H.I.E.L.D. _don’t_ interact with the Director on a daily basis, and all they know is what they’re told by the people above them—the people who sign the paychecks.

It would be in the best interests of her career to keep her mouth shut, but that’s not something the Carter women are known for, historically speaking.

“With all due respect,” she says into the sudden silence, too loudly to be ignored, “if S.H.I.E.L.D. is conducting a manhunt for Captain America, we deserve to know why.”

“Because he lied to us,” says an authoritative voice from the doorway, and Sharon whips around just in time to see Alexander Pierce walk into the room. “Captain Barnes and his associate have information regarding the death of Director Fury, and they’ve refused to share it. Barnes has also personally attacked another Avenger, who's in Medical right now as a result. As difficult as this is to accept, as of this moment, Captain America is a fugitive from S.H.I.E.L.D.”

The murmurs start again, louder this time, and Sharon stands rooted to the spot in shock for a long moment, until Sitwell and Pierce have both left the control room. If she does what she’s considering, she’s probably throwing away the career she’s been working toward since the first time her father showed her a black-and-white photo of a woman in a modified World War II field uniform, with a rifle in her hands, and told her that was Aunt Peggy, and that she was a hero.

But Aunt Peggy was also the one whose letters she read as a teenager, looking for direction. Aunt Peggy was the one who wrote that when the whole world is trying to push you out of the way, it’s your duty to plant yourself like a tree and say to that world, _no, you move._

Sharon walks out into the hallway, unclips her cell phone from its place near the gun on her belt, and dials a number she never expected to have to use, a number she’s keeping around for the ultimate emergency.

“Ms. Potts,” she says, “I’m Agent 13 of S.H.I.E.L.D. I’m a friend of Steve Rogers, and I need your help.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy 2017, my friends!
> 
> (The "literally one hundred years old" incident happened to someone I Tumblr-know, although I can't find the post now. I sincerely hope the student who assumed the staff member was a fellow student really did got away thinking they'd been talking to a vampire.)


	8. Ghost Stories

The argument in the hospital parking lot is heated but brief. Steve wants Bucky to find them another car while he retrieves the flash drive, reasoning that he’ll attract less notice if he goes into the hospital alone, while Bucky declares that he’ll be fucked if he’s splitting up now that S.H.I.E.L.D. is after them both. Because they don’t have time to out-stubborn each other, they end up with a compromise that neither of them likes: Bucky will retrieve the drive while Steve will stay in yelling distance and scout around for something he can use to splint his arm. The operating room where Fury died is just down the hall from the ER, and Steve is rummaging through an unlocked storage closet labeled _Orthopedic Supplies_ when Sam says, “Need a hand?”

Steve turns. Fury’s voice is still in his head, saying _don’t trust anyone,_ but Bucky trusts Sam and Steve trusts Bucky’s judgment. So he says, “Don’t you usually save that joke for Bucky?” and holds up a foam arm brace. “You wanna help me get this on?”

Sam raises an eyebrow. “Do I want to know what you did to yourself?”

“Jumped out a fifth-story window.”

“Okay, for the record? The answer was _no.”_ Sam holds the brace while Steve slides his arm into it and tightens the straps. “Does it hurt?”

“A little.”

“Why do I get the feeling ‘a little’ always means ‘a lot’ with you?” He adjusts one of the straps, then asks, “Better?”

Steve smiles. “A little.”

“You know what? Barnes is right. You are a punk.” Sam goes back to the shelves, fishes around, and comes up with a sling. “Here. If you’re gonna rob a hospital, you might as well be thorough.”

“I’m not robbing anybody. I’ll come back later and pay for these.”

“That was supposed to be a joke. You have weird priorities, Rogers.”

“So they tell me.” Steve hitches the strap of the sling up, then meets Sam’s eyes. “Sam, as far as I know, nobody’s after you and Natasha yet. You should go back to New York, tell Tony what’s going on. Maybe he can talk to Rhodey for us and try to sort this thing out.”

“Yeah, about that. Tony’s still held up overseas, but even if he was here, I’m not sure how much pull he has with the government since the whole Mandarin thing. And the Tower’s not safe for you right now, either. There was a security breach this morning. Jarvis says nothing was stolen, but—”

“—But let me guess: S.H.I.E.L.D. took it upon themselves to respond, and the place is crawling with agents who’d coincidentally like to talk to us if we show up?”

“Got it in one,” Sam says.

“You and Natasha could still go back, pretend you never saw us.”

“Even if I thought Natasha would be on board with that,” Sam says, “I wouldn’t be. Two Captain Americas need my help, Steve. I can’t think of a better reason to stay.”

Steve’s smile feels a little more genuine this time. “Thank you, Sam.”

“When this is all over, you can look for a bill from me right next to the one from this hospital,” says Sam. “Now let’s get out of here.”

 

When Bucky arrives at the vending machine with a pocket full of quarters, the scene has played out in his head so many times that he has to check four times to be sure he isn’t just imagining that the flash drive is gone. “Fuck,” he mutters. Their only lead in Fury’s death is lost, probably to some innocent civilian who’s gonna go home and reformat the drive and fill it up with music files and photos of their kids without ever knowing that somebody died for it.

That’s when Natasha walks up behind him, blows a chewing gum bubble, and pops it.

Bucky stares at her for several seconds. Then he grabs her by both arms and half-pulls, half-shoves her into an empty exam room across the hall. “Where is it?” he demands.

“Safe. Where did you get it?”

“What makes you think I ever had it?”

Natasha is too damn quick on the uptake. “Fury gave it to Rogers. Why?”

“Who the fuck knows why Fury did anything? What’s on it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You downloaded it!”

“I downloaded an encrypted data file. I didn’t read it.” He gives her a skeptical look, and she says, “I only act like I know everything, Barnes.”

Bucky presses his right hand to his temple. “Natalia,” he says, “I’m having a fucking awful day and every time I think I’m at the end of my rope, something happens that makes me slip a little further down. So either call S.H.I.E.L.D. and turn me in, or cut the crap and tell me why you’re here.”

“I know who shot you and Fury,” says Natasha.

Bucky is quiet for a minute, startled. Then he says, “If you knew, why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“I wasn’t sure until Hill ran ballistics yesterday. You didn’t bring home any bullets for us to test.”

“Well, pardon me for not thinking of that while I was trying not to _bleed to death_ in _Asgard,”_ Bucky says. “Who is it?”

Natasha hesitates for a moment, then says, “Most of the intelligence community doesn’t believe she exists. The ones that do call her Faust.”

“Faust as in, what, the guy who made the deal with the devil?”

“As in _die Faust,_ German for _Fist,”_ Natasha says. “It’s probably not what she calls herself. She’s credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years.”

“Fifty years,” Bucky repeats. “So this is a ghost story.”

“Five years ago, I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran,” Natasha says. “Somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff. I pulled us out, but Faust was there. I was covering my engineer, so she shot him through me.” She hitches up her shirt a few inches to show him the round scar of an entry wound. “Soviet slug, no rifling. Bye-bye, bikinis.”

“I don’t think I’d let that stop me if I was you,” Bucky says. “Is she Red Room?”

“There were rumors. A special trainer who was brought in to teach the best recruits, a secret breeding program—”

“Christ,” says Bucky.

“—But at the end of the day, no, I don’t think so. The Red Room is all about finesse. Faust is a blunt instrument. She goes in fast, hits hard, and disappears. Going after her is a dead end. I know. I’ve tried.” She holds up the flash drive. “If you and Rogers want to get out of this alive, you’ll need all the help you can get.”

Bucky takes a deep breath. “Okay,” he says, “so I guess we’re going ghost hunting.”

 

“The first rule of going on the run is don’t run; walk,” Natasha tells Bucky, as they make their way through the mall. They’ve left Sam and Steve at a motel; Sam is on guard duty while Steve catches a few hours of sleep. Bucky isn’t exactly sure why he isn’t with them, but Natasha is running this show, and if nobody else questioned it, he guesses he can’t, either.

“If I tried to run right now, I’d probably go straight into a wall,” he says, shoving his borrowed glasses back into place. Steve’s vision really is horrible. Besides the glasses, he’s in civilian clothes, a hoodie and a ball cap and the flesh-colored cover on his prosthetic, but he doubts his disguise would stand up to more than a few seconds of scrutiny. “Are you sure I shouldn’t’ve cut my hair, or dyed it, or something?”

“It’s not worth the bother. They’d be looking for that, and it certainly wouldn’t confuse facial recognition software. Glasses do, once in a while, and not shaving wasn’t the worst call you could make.”

“It wasn’t a call; I haven’t had _time._ I haven’t seen a bed or a shower since yesterday morning. Speaking of which,” Bucky says, eyeing the Food Court sign, “if we could just stop for coffee—”

“No.”

“One cup. Nothing fancy. I won’t even stop to put sugar in—”

“No.” Natasha takes his arm and leads him, firmly, into the Apple store, stationing herself in front of one of the computers. “The drive has a Level Six homing program, so as soon as we boot up, S.H.I.E.L.D. will know exactly where we are.”

“How long do we have?”

About nine minutes from… now,” says Natasha. She types for several minutes, while Bucky tries not to fidget, then bends over the screen, looking at it quizzically. “This file is protected by some sort of AI. It keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands.”

“Can you get around it?” Bucky asks. “Because, honestly, I’m not gonna be any help here. I gotta ask Jarvis if I want to do anything more complicated than watch cat videos.”

“The person who developed this is slightly smarter than me,” Natasha says. _“Slightly._ I’m going to try running a tracer. This is a program that S.H.I.E.L.D. developed to track hostile malware, so if we can’t read the file, maybe we can find out where it came from.”

“C’mon, Tahiti,” Bucky says, which makes Natasha smile briefly before she turns her attention back to the screen. One of the store employees is heading their way; he moves a little closer to her and does his best glare, and the guy turns around and heads in the other direction. _Mission accomplished,_ Bucky thinks. Then he looks at the screen and blinks. With his luck, he knew it wouldn’t actually be anywhere he wants to go, but… “Jersey? Really?”

“Shh,” says Natasha. “Got it.” The screen zooms in on a single blinking light, and Bucky blinks, then says, “Shit,” very softly.

“You know it?” she asks.

“I was an Army brat and my dad was a military history buff. I’d know Camp Lehigh in my sleep,” Bucky says. “That’s where they—you know what, I’ll explain later. Let’s go.”

They’re not even fifty feet from the store entrance when he spots the first member of the S.T.R.I.K.E. team—Bucky doesn’t know his name, but he’s definitely one of the guys he’s seen around with Rumlow—and from there, it’s almost too easy to spot the others, because they’re running the op exactly the way he would. “There are six of them,” he says. “I can probably take four, so if you take the two that are straight ahead and I draw fire from the other ones—”

“Shut up and put your arm around me,” Natasha says. “Laugh at something I said.”

“What?”

“Do it!”

Bucky does it, leaning in close and faking a laugh he definitely doesn’t feel, and incredibly, _impossibly,_ the S.T.R.I.K.E. guy’s eyes slide right over them. “How’d you know…” he begins, but there’s no time to ask questions; Natasha leads him onto the escalator, and they’re a quarter of the way down when Bucky spots Rumlow stepping onto the one that’s going up.

Instantly, Bucky’s heart is pounding so hard in his ears that when Natasha speaks, he’s sure he’s heard wrong. “What?” he says.

“Kiss me,” she repeats. “Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable.”

“Are you fucking kidding m—” is as far as he gets, before Natasha’s lips lock onto his.

A lot of thoughts go through Bucky’s head very quickly for the next ten seconds, ranging from _this will never work_ to _oh no she’s good at this_ to _Jesus Christ what is wrong with you Barnes_ to _Sam is gonna fucking kill me._ He knows it doesn’t mean a damn thing, but shit, that doesn’t mean it isn’t skillfully executed.

“Are you still uncomfortable?” Natasha asks, straight-faced, as she turns away from him, and he remembers, abruptly, that the whole purpose of the little show they’re putting on is to throw off pursuit. He looks up, half expecting to find a gun leveled at his head, and sees that Rumlow is past them, eyes front, scanning the rest of the crowd.

Ten minutes ago, Bucky wouldn’t have believed it was possible that someone as sharp as Rumlow has missed them, or that they could have gotten out of such a bad situation without a fight. Natasha has been consistently impressing him for as long as they’ve worked together, but he’s starting to realize that he’s barely seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of what she can do.

“I am thinking about baseball _really hard_ right now,” he says, and she laughs all the way to the mall exit.

 

“Natalia,” Bucky says, as they’re pulling into the motel parking lot, “why did you take me along on this little adventure of yours?”

“Well, my regular partner was injured by a dangerous fugitive earlier today,” she says dryly.

Bucky shakes his head. “I don’t mean why did you want backup. That’s just good sense. I mean, why me? I know Steve’s hurt, but you could have taken Sam. I mean, as far as we know, S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t even know you’re working with me yet. If they’d been running that facial recognition software you were talking about, it probably would’ve skimmed right over both of you.”

Natasha looks at him, one hand on the steering wheel. “Sam is more of a soldier than a spy,” she says. “He’s like Steve in that way. Neither of them has any aptitude for being anything but honest.”

“So you picked me ‘cause I’m the best liar. Gee, thanks.”

“Take the compliment, Barnes. There’s not a lot of call for the truth in our line of work.”

“I know,” Bucky says. “You ever notice how the two of us gravitate toward the most honest people we can find? I know being a sniper isn’t exactly like being a spy, but doing what we both did… After a while, I think you push people away whether you mean to or not. It’s a pretty lonely way to live.”

“Yeah,” Natasha says. “It’s a good way not to die, though.”

They’re both hovering on the edge of saying something important again, he thinks, but before he can figure out what it is, she pops open the car door. “Get some sleep. You look about done in.”

“I will. And _you_ can explain to our respective boyfriends why our intelligence gathering mission required us to make out on an escalator.”

“I wouldn’t be too worried. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing you could do that would make Steve like you any less.”

“You think so?”

“Bucky,” Natasha says, which she only does when she really wants him to sit up and take notice, “I’ve never in my life seen two people as devoted to each other as the two of you.”

“Really?”

“Really. Even if you could use some kissing practice.”

“I don’t need _practice,”_ Bucky says, before he realizes Natasha is yanking his chain. “Go make a mix tape for our road trip tomorrow or something,” he says, scowling at her, and walks up the stairs to the motel room.

Steve flips on the light over the bed almost before Bucky opens the door. “Hey,” he says softly. “Did it go okay?”

“We got a lead. Not much else. Tell you about it in the morning.” Bucky locks the door, throws the deadbolt, and flops on the bed. As soon as he stops moving, he can feel the dull ache of dozens of bruises, from the elevator and the fall afterward. “Natasha kissed me.”

“What, on purpose?”

Bucky manages a grin, but that’s about all he has left in him. The last thirty hours are catching up with him hard; his body’s so tired he can barely find the energy to kick his shoes off, but his brain is still spinning, full of Pierce and Rumlow, GPS trackers and software and the weird connection to the Army base where Steve went through Basic seventy-odd years ago. “It didn’t mean anything.”

“I know,” Steve says, and when Bucky turns his head and shoots him a surprised look, he shrugs and says, “I trust you.”

“You shouldn’t. I got you mixed up in this whole clusterfuck with S.H.I.E.L.D., I got you hurt, I couldn’t save Fury, I—”

“Bucky.” Steve leans over and kisses him, and this kiss is completely unlike Natasha’s—soft and gentle and with real feeling behind it. On any other day, it would make him feel fucking invincible. Today, it just feels like a sharp reminder that he’s so goddamn lucky to have Steve and he can’t even protect him. Steve was barely over being sick and now he’s hurt and God only knows what kind of emotional toll this is taking on him, going on the run from the people he’s always fought for, and what kills Bucky the most is how it all fell apart so quickly—how everything was fine and now it feels like nothing will ever be fine again.

“Buck,” Steve says, and when Bucky hears the aching sadness in his voice, he realizes that this time, he’s the one who’s been a million miles away. “I don’t know how to help you.”

Oh, fantastic; now Steve is worried about _him,_ as if this wasn’t already enough of a mess. “It’s not your job to fix this, Steve,” he says. “Just go back to sleep, okay?”

There’s a pause, and Steve says, “Okay,” in a small, hurt voice, and wow, Bucky is just fucking things up like a champion today, isn’t he? But the more he tries to fix it, the worse he seems to make it, so he turns over, putting his back to Steve, and falls asleep feeling like shit.

 

Bucky is uncharacteristically quiet on the drive to Camp Lehigh. He probably thinks nobody has noticed, but Steve, for one, has damn well noticed. Sure, he’s faking it for all he’s worth, bitching about his bruises and strained muscles and about the fact that he’s stuck in the back seat with no legroom because Sam won’t give up shotgun, but he shuts down every time someone else is carrying the conversation, such as it is. Steve reaches over a couple of times to squeeze his metal fingers, and each time Bucky smiles at him, but it’s never long before he lapses back into moody silence, staring blankly out the back window at the New Jersey Turnpike.

Steve keeps wanting to say something, but what is there to say? Bucky was right: he can’t fix this. He can’t mouth any generic lies about how this will all be okay or how everything works out for the best, and even if he did, Bucky wouldn’t believe him. Sometimes the good guys lose; sometimes the wrong people die. They’ve both seen it happen. They both know that sometimes you keep fighting until you can’t fight anymore, and it still isn’t enough.

Steve doesn’t think that makes the fight itself any less important, but as platitudes go, it’s not a very comforting one.

The facility is gated, but it’s just an ordinary chain link fence; Bucky rips the padlock off with his metal hand and takes point without asking, and the gate swings open almost of its own accord. Steve stops as they’re walking through the gate, and Sam, beside him, says, “You okay, man?”

“This place is where I was trained,” Steve says, which is not exactly an answer.

“Changed much?”

“A little,” Steve says, just to make Sam roll his eyes, but he doesn’t say what he’s thinking: sure, it’s disorienting to see the camp boarded up and abandoned, when he remembers it fresh and spit-shined and humming with activity. But the truth, the real truth, is that it’s not the place that’s changed; it’s him. “There’s a word for this,” he says.

“Jamais vu,” Bucky supplies, and when everyone looks at him, he shrugs. “The opposite of déjà vu. When you know it should be familiar, but it’s not.”

Steve nods. “That’s it,” he says. “That’s it exactly.”

“This is a dead end,” Natasha says. She has a scanner, and she’s been walking a perimeter around the central cluster of buildings, watching the screen. “Zero heat signature, zero waves, not even radio. Whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off.” She glances at Steve, whose eyes are still scanning the boarded-up buildings. “What is it?”

“Army regulations forbid storing ammunition within five hundred yards from the barracks,” Steve says, walking toward one of the structures. “This building is in the wrong place.”

“You memorized the munitions storage regs?” Sam says. “Wow, and all this time, I thought Barnes was the biggest nerd on the team.”

“Well,” Steve tells him, pretending not to notice when Bucky points his metal middle finger in Sam’s direction, “it was the Strategic _Scientific_ Reserve.” He points to the lock. “Want to let us in, Buck?”

Bucky’s brought the shield, of course; after the last couple of days, Steve doesn’t blame him for not wanting to let it out of his sight. He bashes the lock and shoves the doors open, and Steve leads them all inside. He finds a light switch and flicks it on without much hope, so he’s surprised when a bank of fluorescent lights springs to life overhead.

“This is S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Sam says, surprised, taking a step toward a metal plate on the far wall. It’s an old, old version of the circle-and-eagle symbol, closer to the SSR’s logo than the modern one.

“Maybe where it started,” Steve says. There’s a row of portraits on the wall, and he finds himself drawn forward; he stops in front of them, staring.

“There’s Stark’s father,” Natasha observes. “Who are the others?”

“That’s Gabe Jones,” Steve says, pointing to one of the portraits. He’d been surprised when he found out that Gabe had gone on to help found S.H.I.E.L.D.—for about a minute. Then he’d thought, _Of course._ Peggy had always said that winning the war was only the first step, that the most important work would be in reshaping the world afterward. Second to Steve, Gabe had been closest to her; it makes sense that he would have chosen to carry on her work. “As for the lady, we never met, but I recognize the photograph. Her name was Ana Jarvis.”

“Jarvis, like Tony’s Jarvis?” Sam says.

“You’d have to ask him. I think Howard might have mentioned her once or twice, but that’s all I know.”

“Okay, so it’s a secret office,” Bucky says. “Still not seeing how the file came from here.”

Steve looks around the room, more carefully this time. He’s looking at the bookcases against the far wall, or rather, at the gap between them, where a cobweb is blowing in a draft that shouldn’t be there. He crosses the room and gives one of them an experimental push, and to his surprise, it slides aside easily on a hidden track. “If you’re already working in a secret office,” he asks, “why do you need to—”

“Jesus, Stevie.” Bucky is there, one of his guns drawn, pushing him aside before he can even get the question out. “Are you ever gonna learn to think before you go jumping blindly into stuff?”

“For heaven’s sake, Buck. There’s nothing behind here but an elevator.” Steve punches the _down_ button, and the doors slide open. “Can we go now, or do you want to roll to check for traps?”

“You taught Rogers about Dungeons and Dragons? I’m revising my opinion on that nerd thing,” Sam says to Bucky, but he’s right there in the elevator with them; he didn’t bring a gun, but Steve sees his hand resting on the pocket knife he’s clipped to his belt.

Bucky maneuvers between the rest of them and the elevator doors, a pistol in his right hand and the shield on his left arm, as they descend, but the doors open onto a cavernous room that’s empty of threats, unless dusty banks of obsolete computer equipment pose a threat.

“Wow, and I thought _you_ were old,” Bucky says lightly, but if anything, his grip on the pistol only tightens. Steve doesn’t bother to pretend he’s offended, though, because this technology really is ancient. The racks of metal surrounding them have more in common with the Colossus machine at Bletchley Park than with, say, the sleek, glossy, brightly-colored datapads that Tony keeps tossing at the Avengers like they’re candy.

Natasha steps forward, and Steve follows her eyes to the only thing in the place that looks less than forty years old: a small, blinking box with a USB port. She slots the flash drive into the port, and the banks of tape and motors surrounding them suddenly whirr to life.

INITIATE SYSTEM? a monitor flashes, and Natasha steps forward and types Y-E-S. She shoots a mischievous glance in Bucky’s direction as she does, and says, in a monotone, “Shall we play a game?”

“I give up. I’m surrounded. You’re _all_ hopeless nerds,” Sam is saying, when suddenly, an old video camera that’s mounted on the wall spins in their direction.

Bucky whips around and aims his gun at the camera, but Steve lays a hand on his arm to stop him before he fires. The camera scans up and down, as if it’s analyzing them, and then a voice begins to speak out of a decrepit speaker system.

“Rogers, Steven,” it says, “born 1918. Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna, born 1984. Barnes, James, born 1985. Wilson, Samuel, born 1980.”

“It’s a recording,” Natasha begins, but Steve’s jaw has already dropped, because he recognizes the voice, even before a grainy image flickers to life on the computer screen.

“I am not a recording, Fraulein,” the tinny voice goes on. “I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945, but—”

“Zola,” Steve says, and his voice sounds like a stranger’s in his own ears. “He was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. After he defected, he ended up working for S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Bucky is staring at the screen. “So what are we saying here? This asshole built some kind of artificial intelligence to take over for him when he died?”

“First correction,” says the computer, “I am Swiss. Second, I have never been more alive. In 1972 I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body. My mind, however—that was worth saving, on two hundred thousand feet of databanks. You are standing in my brain.”

“That… that is unbelievably fucked up,” says Sam, and Steve can’t begin to disagree.

“And you hid this from S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Bucky presses. “I don’t care how smart you thought you were, you couldn’t have done all this alone. You were… Oh my God.” He looks like he might throw up. “You didn’t defect. You were a _mole.”_

“Hydra was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom,” the Zola-thing says. “What we did not realize, was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded and I was recruited. The new Hydra grew, a beautiful parasite inside S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Steve swallows. This can’t be possible—he went into the ice to finish off Hydra. Peggy _died_ to stop Hydra. But at the same time, he can’t deny the evidence that’s right in front of him. “So what’s on the drive?” he demands.

“Insight,” the Zola-thing says, and Bucky starts, almost guiltily. “Insight into the enemies of Hydra. You, Captain Rogers, and you, Samuel Wilson, you are on the list. James Barnes and Natalia Romanoff, it may interest you to know, are not.”

“The fuck,” Bucky says. “You fucking—of course both of us are gonna fight you. Now that I know there’s any part of you that survived, I’m gonna make it my personal mission to _destroy_ you, you Nazi asshole.”

If anything, the Zola-thing actually starts to look more smug. “The Fraulein has already been turned once,” it says. “My analysis suggested that you, Captain Barnes, might have been convinced to do the same. Unfortunately, you shall soon be too dead to find out.”

That’s the moment Steve realizes that a blast door is coming down, cutting off their escape route. Sam runs toward the door, but it’s too late. Steve looks around frantically, spots a grate in the floor, dives for it and tries to pry it up; belatedly, Bucky realizes what he’s doing and rushes to add his metal arm to the effort. When the grate comes up, Steve pushes Natasha in first, and Sam, before Bucky finally shoves him into the opening as well.

“Admit it, Captain Rogers, it’s better this way. We’re both of us out of time,” the Zola-thing says, and it’s the last thing he hears before the missile hits the bunker and everything goes dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now, dear reader, you get to see what I actually spent most of my winter break on. :) As excited as I am to share it, the words-putting-into-sentences-doing was a BEAR on this chapter. I think the trickiest pieces are the ones where I’m following the canonical stories the most closely (BTW, don’t worry, I promise everybody lives).
> 
> Zola’s theory that Natasha might have been convinced to switch sides and work for Hydra is another thing that cropped up in a CA:TWS deleted scene (in the DVD extras, I think?), and it’s been lodged in my imagination ever since.
> 
> RembrandtsWife suggested die Faust for a different “new fist of Hydra” while I was writing one of my other fics. I didn’t end up using it there, but I stole it and used it here instead because it’s so well suited to a certain somebody’s fighting style.


	9. Foggy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mention of past emotional / psychological abuse in the Natasha POV section about 3/4 of the way through this chapter.

“Nelson.” The voice on the phone when Foggy picks up is gritty, as if the owner is hoarse and tired. It’s not unfamiliar, but Foggy can’t place it until the caller says, “You still live in Brooklyn?”

Foggy breaks into a smile. “Bucky Barnes, you son of a bitch,” he says, delighted. “I haven’t heard from you in years! My mom said you were back in town, but—”

“This isn’t a social call, Foggy,” Barnes says. “Listen, man, I’m really sorry about this, but you owe me a favor and I’m calling it in. Can you get your hands on a car?”

“A car? What the hell, Barnes?” Foggy takes a deep breath. “Yeah, I could probably borrow one. I’m not in Brooklyn, though.”

“S’okay. Neither am I. Get the car, get on… uh…” There’s a rustling sound, probably a map, and Bucky says, “Get on I-95 South and drive until you hit the exit for Wheaton, New Jersey. Look for a sign that says Camp Lehigh, but don’t turn down the access road. You’re gonna keep going past it until you see a Shell station about two miles west. When you get there, pull around behind the building, kill the lights, and wait for me. You got all that?”

“Wheaton, Shell station, kill the lights. Never heard of Camp Lehigh. What’s there?”

“Me, and some friends of mine who are in big fucking trouble, so if we could cut the chatter…”

“Okay, okay. You should just know it’s probably gonna take me till seven, eight o’clock to get there, and if you’re in a police station when I show up, it’ll probably be morning before I can get you out.”

Bucky laughs mirthlessly, then coughs. He sounds like absolute shit. “If we get caught, it’s not gonna be trouble a lawyer can get us out of, Fogs. Just get here as fast as you can. And bring a first-aid kit, if you got one.”

“Barnes, what exactly are you mixed up in?”

“Can’t explain it over the phone. Just come, okay?”

“Look, Barnes,” Foggy is beginning, when he realizes he’s talking to dead air. He sighs, shoves his phone back in his pocket, and sits on the couch, putting his head on his hands.

He’s got a first-aid kit. He’s looking at it now, in fact. It’s in a black duffel bag sitting by his front door, which he currently thinks of as his Matt Murdock Fucked Up Again go-bag. “I must have been a very, very bad man in a former life,” he says out loud to his empty apartment, before he picks up the bag and heads out the door.

 

The entrance to Camp Lehigh is blocked off by a fleet of cop cars with their blue lights flashing, which is Foggy’s first clue that he’s either on the right track or on a very, very wrong one. The Shell station is right where it’s supposed to be, a little ways down the road from all the commotion, and it’s not Bucky’s fault that Foggy misses the driveway and ends up on a five-minute detour before he finds a spot to turn around. It’s fine, though, because it gives him time to talk himself out of pointing the car back toward his uncle’s place in Brooklyn and leaving Bucky to his fate. He drives around to the back of the building, shuts off the headlights, and waits, and maybe fifteen seconds go by before the door opens and Bucky slides into the passenger seat. “Hey, man,” he says, and he shuts his eyes, just for a second, before he opens them again and turns to Foggy. “Thanks.”

“Yeah, well, you weren’t wrong, man. I do owe you one. More than one, probably.” Foggy is very pointedly not freaking out about the fact that Bucky is filthy, his clothes are ripped all to hell, and, although the cut on his cheek looks like it’s more or less crusted over, there’s a fair amount of blood on him in general. Bucky was always fastidious about his looks in the old days; it seems like a bad sign if he’s been waiting outside a gas station for a couple of hours and hasn’t gone inside and made any effort to clean himself up.

Then again, Foggy hasn’t seen him since before he lost his arm, and it’s entirely possible that trauma has changed him. Foggy vaguely remembers hearing that he got into some program that got him one of those crazy advanced prosthetics, but this is the first time he’s gotten a look at it. It’s hard to miss the silver metal glinting behind the torn sleeve of his hoodie, and the surface plates clank together every time Bucky shifts in his seat. “So how’s Lizzie?” he asks, wrenching his eyes away.

“Uh, she’s good. Lives in Chicago now, works for a big investment firm. She has kind of a serious girlfriend now, though. Sorry, Foggy.”

“Good for her,” Foggy says. When Bucky looks skeptical, he says, “Come on, man, it’s not the world’s biggest shock when somebody you met at theater camp comes out. When she gave me the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech, it was maybe the only time in my life I ever believed it. I’m glad she’s doing well.” He glances around. “So where are these friends you were talking about?”

“I’ll get ’em. I had to make sure…” Bucky sighs and slides something into his belt, and Foggy starts when he realizes it’s a handgun. “It’s not that I didn’t trust you, it’s just that things are fucking complicated right now. Hang on,” he says, getting out of the car and waving his companions over. Foggy sees a short, skinny blonde guy; a slender, good-looking black guy; and a redheaded woman who’s probably a real knockout when she’s not covered in concrete dust. None of them looks quite as beat to shit as Bucky, but they’re all in varying degrees of banged up, and the skinny guy’s arm is in a sling. Bucky puts his arm around the skinny guy in a way that’s pretty unmistakable, so that’s a thing.

The blonde guy leans in close to him. “You’re sure about this,” he says, voice low, as much a statement as a question.

 _“Yes,_ I told you, he’s okay,” Bucky says, with an apologetic glance at Foggy. “We can trust him.”

Foggy smiles faintly. “Hey, Barnes,” he says. “You got any cash on you?”

Bucky turns around and raises an eyebrow at the black guy, who sighs heavily and pulls out his wallet. “I got like… thirty-eight bucks?”

“Good. Give it to me.” Foggy takes the cash out of the black guy’s hand. “You just hired yourselves a lawyer, which means anything you say to me falls under attorney-client privilege.”

“Oh, yeah, I’ve seen that move on TV before,” Bucky says.

“On TV,” the black guy observes dryly, “the lawyer usually asks for _one_ dollar.”

“You really want to be represented by the kind of crappy lawyer you can hire for a dollar?”

The blonde guy is frowning. “Mr. Nelson—” he begins.

“Foggy,” says Foggy. “Mr. Nelson’s my dad.”

“Foggy, then,” says the blonde guy. “It’s not an issue of trust. I just think you have the right to know—”

“Steve,” says Bucky, in a warning tone.

“—The right to know that what we’re involved with has already gotten a good man killed,” says the blonde guy, a.k.a. Steve.

Foggy takes a deep breath and lets it out in a sigh. “Okay, well,” he says, “as your lawyer, I have to counsel you that if you have knowledge of a crime, you should take it to an appropriate law enforcement agency to avoid being charged as an accessory after the fact. But I’m assuming a bunch of Avengers would already know that, so if you’re _not_ taking it to—which one is it? Is it S.H.I.E.L.D. or the NSA? I can never remember.”

“Whoa now,” says Sam. “What makes you think—”

“Come on, man, I have eyes. You think I wouldn’t know Black Widow and the Falcon when I see them? Feeling a little stupid about not putting it together about Barnes earlier, considering everybody knows Captain America is a guy from Brooklyn with a metal arm, but it _has_ been a while. So if you’re not taking it to the scary government agency of your choice, this must be something that’s pretty far off the books, right? No, you know what, as your lawyer, I’m advising you not to answer that. Just tell me what you need right now.”

There’s a brief, slightly stunned silence outside the car, and then Steve says, “We need a place to lay low.”

“Everybody we know is trying to kill us,” says the redhead. Foggy thinks he heard somewhere that her name is Natasha, although the Widow is supposed to be pretty cagey about her identity as well as her past.

“Well, my apartment’s pretty small,” he says, “and the building definitely has a rat problem, but it’s been a couple weeks since the last assassination. …Come on, guys, I’m kidding. Hell’s Kitchen is a little rough, but it’s not _that_ bad.”

“It’s not that,” says Bucky. “You’re just, uh… For a civilian, I think it’s fair to say you’re adapting to this situation a lot better than anybody expected.”

Foggy knows his smile is very, very thin. “Let’s just say it’s not my first rodeo,” he says. “Get in, losers. We’re going Avenging.”

 

“Home sweet home,” Foggy says grandly, throwing open the door of his apartment. Yeah, it’s tiny, and he’s probably sharing it with more cockroaches than he wants to think about, but all told, he’s living a lot better than he should be. He snagged the place right after a stray alien speeder damaged the roof of the building—which is a phrase that neither he nor the leasing office ever expected to say in real life; that was a fun conversation—and a minor lack of structural integrity seemed like a small price to pay to lock in two whole bedrooms and a sweet, sweet galley kitchen of his very own. Sure, he was counting on drawing an actual salary to pay for it at some point, but it wouldn’t be life in the big city without a crushing burden of debt, would it? “The couch pulls out to sleep two, and I’ll go around to the neighbors and see if I can scare up some air mattresses.”

Natasha—who, Foggy has discovered over the last two hours of driving, is a master at keeping a conversation firmly rooted in the smallest of small talk—raises an eyebrow at Bucky. “Flip you for the room with the door that closes?”

“I don’t care where I sleep,” Bucky says. “Just point me toward the shower.”

“Bathroom’s the first door on the right, man, but maybe you should put something on that cut before you… and he’s gone,” Foggy observes. “The rest of you can use the kitchen sink to start cleaning up, if you want. You can borrow some of my clothes for now. You’ll all swim in them, but I’ll take yours down to the laundry room in the basement and they’ll be clean in the morning. There’s not much in the fridge, but if you like beer and leftover Chinese, help yourselves.”

Sam nods appreciatively and looks at Steve. “You gonna let anybody check you out for injuries, or are you gonna be a stubborn dumbass?”

“Sam, if there’s one thing I know, it’s how to patch myself up,” Steve says. “Take care of yourself and Natasha. I’m fine.”

“Yeah,” Sam says wearily, as he picks up what’s left of the first aid kit and moves toward the sink. “I figured you’d say that.”

By the time Foggy emerges from his bedroom with fresh clothes, Steve has set the duffel bag on the coffee table and is poking through the contents with his good hand. “You throw all this together on the fly?” he asks.

“Nah. Been working on it for a while.”

“It’s a good idea. I understand the burner phone, and the protein bars, and the whiskey,” Steve says, with a wry twist to his mouth, “but what are the work gloves for?”

“Hypothetically, let’s say I ever had to pull a friend out of a Dumpster,” Foggy says.

“And the socks?”

“Dude. Have you never seen Die Hard?”

“That’s a movie, isn’t it?” Steve says. “I’ll put it on my list.”

“Huh.” Foggy takes a seat beside him. “So how long have you and Barnes been a thing?”

“About a year. We’re engaged, actually.”

“Congratulations,” Foggy says. “I can hear the lamentations rising up from all the singles bars in Brooklyn from here.”

“How do you know him?” Steve asks.

“Oh, I grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, but my Nana lived in Red Hook. Mom used to send me to stay with her for a couple weeks every summer. Thought maybe I could charm the old bat into helping me pay for college, but I was more interested in charming Lizzie Barnes. Bucky was four or five years older than us, and he was pretty great to Liz, as older siblings go. He’d sneak us into R-rated movies once in a while, that kind of thing. Couple years later, I got in some trouble—not chased-by-ninjas trouble or whatever it is you’re in, just dumb kid stuff, but bad enough that it could’ve cost me my scholarship, which would’ve meant no college. Bucky happened to be home on leave, and he helped me get out of it. Of course, then he gave me the Vito Corleone speech.” When Steve looks blank, he clarifies, “You know, ‘Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to’—seriously, man? No Die Hard _and_ no Godfather?”

“I grew up without a TV,” Steve says. “That sounds like Bucky, though. If somebody’s in trouble, he has to help. It’s who he is.”

Foggy can’t take it anymore. “Okay, man, I’m sorry, but I just gotta ask. Are you the guy who turns into the Hulk?”

“What?” Steve says. “No, of course not.”

“Well, then, who are you, besides Barnes’s… betrothed _…_ that you’re running around with all these Avenger types? Because no offense, but—”

“I don’t look the part,” Steve says, with a half-smile. “I’ve noticed.”

Foggy gives him a minute to add something to that, then shrugs. “Okay, don’t tell me. I get it: the less I know, the better. But you should really think about getting yourself some body armor, dude.”

“I’ll take it under advisement,” says Steve. “I just hope we haven’t gotten you in trouble.”

“Yeah,” Foggy says. “This kind of thing can get a guy killed. Or worse, disbarred. But… Well, here’s the thing, Steve. I got this buddy, real annoying do-gooder type, keeps getting in fights he has no business being in and getting his ass handed to him. But every time I tell him to stop, he throws that quote at me about how the only thing the bad guys need to win is for the good guys to do nothing. So you tell me: if I hadn’t come and picked you up tonight, would I have been helping the bad guys win?”

“Yes,” Steve says. “You would have. Thank you, Foggy.”

“So this do-gooder buddy of yours,” Bucky says, from the hallway. His clothes are slung over his arm and he’s got a towel wrapped around his waist, which leads Foggy to make two quick observations: first, that prosthetic arm is even more of a beast than the photos make it out to be—the plates wrap over whatever is left of his shoulder, meeting the skin in a line of scars—and second, that Bucky is frigging _ripped_ these days. “He doesn’t happen to be Catholic, does he?”

“Uh, yeah, he is,” Foggy says, tearing himself away from a sudden resolution to start going to the gym. “Why do you ask?”

“Lucky guess,” Bucky says, with a pointed glance at Steve. “Shower’s yours, Nat,” he says, and then, “Stevie, could we talk for a second?”

Steve’s eyes dart around the tiny apartment, and Foggy takes pity on him. “Here,” he says, tossing Bucky his Columbia sweatshirt and a pair of jeans—Bucky’s closest to him in size; the others can divvy up the clothes he’s kept from twenty pounds ago as an exercise in optimism. “Get decent and go out on the fire escape. Or, you know, don’t, but don’t blame me when you get ogled by Mrs. Czescleba in 4B.”

Bucky nods and, fortunately, gives Foggy time to turn away before he drops the towel and pulls the clothes on. He grins at Foggy as he opens the window and helps Steve climb out, and Foggy grins back, because the poor guy is working so goddamn hard to seem like he _isn’t_ hanging on by his fingernails that Foggy doesn’t have the heart to let him know how obvious it is. But as soon as the window shuts behind him, Bucky visibly wilts. Steve puts his right arm around him, and when he sees how they lean into each other, Foggy is pretty sure they’re the only things holding each other up at all.

 

Natasha has just turned on the water in the shower when the door opens, but she doesn’t jump. Since none of the others would be stupid enough to walk in on her, it’s either Sam or a Hydra agent, and if it’s a Hydra agent, well, it’s not as if she doesn’t know at least three ways to kill a man with a bar of soap. “Hey,” she calls, and Sam says, “Hey,” back, over the running water. A few seconds later, he pulls the curtain back and steps in behind her. “You mind?”

“No. It’s nice of you to give Steve and Bucky some privacy,” Natasha says.

“And to have some for ourselves. That’s an old spy trick, right? Turn on the water so nobody can hear you talking?”

“Maybe in the movies.” Natasha reaches for the shampoo bottle. She feels gritty all over from crawling out of the rubble of the bunker, but the hot water is starting to make her feel human again. Now, if it was only that easy to scrub away every kind of dirt, she’d be in business.

Sam takes the bottle from her, pours a little into his hand, and starts lathering her hair. “Well, if there’s anything you want to talk about,” he says, “this is probably the best shot we’ll have for a while.”

Natasha closes her eyes, tilting her face up under the hot water. Funny, how the idea of telling Sam what she’s thinking suddenly makes her feel more vulnerable and exposed than standing here naked does. “The first time you asked me out,” she says, “I told you I wasn’t looking to fall in love. I told you I didn’t believe in it. And you said that was all right, that we could just see where things went.”

“If this is about to turn into a breakup speech,” Sam says carefully, “I’d like to put some pants on first.”

Natasha shakes her head. “I lied to you,” she says. “I’d been in love once. It ended… badly. They punished us both for it. My next assignment was to seduce a target to get access to something he had that the Red Room wanted—even marry him, if that was what it took.” She lifts her shoulders in a shrug, wincing at the stiffness of a bruise; the grate provided some shelter and Bucky provided more with his ridiculous shield, but enough tons of rock and cement came down on their heads that nothing could have sheltered any of them completely. “And that was what it took.”

“You do know what they did to you in the Red Room was abuse, and it’s horrifying, and nobody judges you for doing what you had to do to survive,” Sam says.

“I know. But I still did it. And afterward, I was even more loyal to the Red Room for a while, because it was easier not to let myself feel guilt—or anything else. That worked until I met Clint, and he made me realize that I wanted what he had. I wanted something to believe in.” She touches the little gold necklace with the arrow on it, the one she wears to remind herself just how much she owes Clint Barton. “When I joined S.H.I.E.L.D., I thought I was going straight, but now I’ve found out I just traded in the KGB for Hydra. I thought I knew whose lies I was telling, but I guess I can't tell the difference.”

“You realize they had everybody fooled, not just you.”

“Yeah. That should help, right?”

“You know, your situation was worse than most, but we’ve all got the same problems,” Sam says. “Guilt, regret. It’s our job to figure out how to carry it.”

“This is your VA speech,” Natasha says. “I’ve heard it before.”

“That make it less true?”

“Sam, you need to know that Zola was right,” Natasha says. “I did change loyalties once. If the circumstances had been different, I might just as easily have sold out S.H.I.E.L.D. for Hydra.”

“Well, I’m not going to say I don’t care about your past,” Sam says. “It’s what makes you who you are now. But I’m more interested in who you’re going to be in the future.”

“Yeah?” Natasha says. “Who do you want me to be?”

“Who do you want to be?”

“Now that’s a therapist trick,” Natasha says. “Besides, it’s easy for you to say ‘be yourself.’ Zola put you in a category with Rogers: incorruptible. He may have had a point, though. If Bucky ever decides to hang up that shield, it might look pretty good on you.”

“Yeah, I bet a black Captain America would be even more popular than a bisexual one.”

“Stranger things have happened.” Natasha is quiet for a moment, letting the water flow over her. “So you really don’t care about the red in my ledger,” she says.

“Nope,” Sam says. “I never look back, darling. It distracts from the now.”

Natasha freezes in surprise for a moment. Then she laughs out loud. “God. You’re quoting The Incredibles, and you had the nerve to call me a nerd.”

“You are a nerd,” Sam says. “But you’re a nerd who told the KGB to kiss her ass. Don’t tell me you won’t do the same with a bunch of octo-Nazis.”

“So if it was down to me to save your life, would you trust me to do it?” Natasha asks, and doesn’t know herself how much she wants to deserve the right answer until she hears it.

“I would now.”

 

“The thing is,” Bucky says, and he’s exhausted, he’s crushed, he’s so far gone that he doesn’t even know if he’s making sense anymore, “my grandma had family she never met because they died in the Holocaust, Steve.”

Steve doesn’t know what to make of that for a minute. “I’m sorry, Buck,” he says. “I… I wish I’d been able to do more.”

“I don’t mean… what I’m trying to say is, Hydra, they’re Nazis. Actual, real Nazis. I know you hate ’em more than anybody, but when Zola was talking, all I could think was that these were the people who would’ve stuck their yellow stars on my sisters and pink triangles on half my friends and thrown them in concentration camps. You and me, we probably wouldn’t have even made it to the camps, with your health and my missing arm. And Zola thought he could’ve convinced me to go over to their side? God, I feel like I’m gonna throw up just thinking about it.”

“Bucky, Zola didn’t know the first thing about you. He—it—only said that to get inside your head. I know you never would have worked for Hydra.”

“But that’s the thing, Steve, I did work for Hydra. Working for S.H.I.E.L.D. was the _same thing_ as working for Hydra.”

“It’s _not_ the same!” Steve shouts, before he realizes he’s doing it and adjusts his tone down. “Fury was S.H.I.E.L.D., and he still put the Avengers together and saved New York. However deep this goes, no matter what else Hydra has gotten its claws into, there are still good men and women at S.H.I.E.L.D. who are trying to do the right thing, and you’re one of them, James Buchanan Barnes.”

“Am I?” Bucky says. “When I was a sniper, when they sent me out to _kill_ people, do you know how many times I justified it to myself that I was _just following orders?_ I’m not naïve—I knew when I joined the Army that it might mean killing people, but I always trusted the chain of command to point me in the right direction. I trusted it even _more_ when I was part of the Winter Soldier program, because, wow, Alexander Pierce was calling the shots, and he was a guy who turned down the Nobel Peace Prize, for fuck’s sake. Now I’m never gonna know how many of those kill shots I made were people who really deserved to die, and how many were just people who wound up on Hydra’s shit list.”

“You were acting in good faith,” Steve begins.

“Yeah, tell that to the families of the dead guys.”

“What do you want me to say, Bucky? I died bringing Hydra down the first time—or I tried to, anyway—and now I find out I just drove them underground for a few decades. Fine. Does that mean I just lie down? No. Now that I know about this, I’ll _keep_ fighting. I’ll fight them for the rest of my life, and I’ll die fighting them again if I have to. You know why?”

“Because you’re a moron?” Bucky says, with no real enthusiasm.

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Steve says.

“I fucking knew you were gonna say that.”

“This job...” Steve begins, stops, looks at Bucky, starts again. “We try to save as many people as we can. Sometimes that doesn't mean everybody, but, if we can't find a way to live with that, then next time, maybe nobody gets saved. Besides,” he says, turning his body so he can punch Bucky’s shoulder lightly with his good arm, “you’re Captain America. It’s your job to beat Nazis through sheer pigheadedness, if you have to.”

“If I hit ’em with _your_ head, I might get somewhere. It’s the hardest surface on the planet.” Bucky gives a deep sigh. “You always this fucking optimistic when you find out you died for nothing?”

“Hey,” Steve says, “even if I have nothing else, I still have you. Things can’t be _that_ bad.”

Bucky leans his head on Steve’s shoulder, and even though his arm is throbbing and it’s getting markedly chilly on the fire escape and Bucky’s wet hair is dripping down his back, Steve lets Bucky stay like that until Foggy opens the window to ask them what superheroes and their boyfriends like on their pizza.

 

“So the question is,” Natasha says, while they’re eating an uninspiring breakfast of cold cereal and juice the next morning, “who at S.H.I.E.L.D. can launch a domestic missile strike?”

“Pierce,” says Steve. “Pierce is up to his eyeballs in this. Bucky and I have suspected him for a while, and between this and what happened at the Triskelion, I think we’ve removed any doubt that he’s our guy.”

“Well, our guy happens to be sitting on top of the most secure building in the world,” Natasha says.

“But he's not working alone,” Bucky points out. “The information for Project Insight was on the Lemurian Star.”

“So was Jasper Sitwell,” Natasha adds.

“So,” Sam says, “we just gotta figure out how to kidnap a S.H.I.E.L.D. officer.”

“Oh, no,” Foggy says. “No, no, no, I cannot be hearing this. Lawyers are supposed to come in _after_ the crime. I can’t be accessory to the abduction of a government official.”

“Wimp,” says Bucky.

“I prefer to phrase it as ‘keeping my ass out of jail so I can defend yours later.’”

“Okay, fair.”

“I have an idea,” Steve says. “Sam, you’ve got your wings, right?”

“Yeah, about that,” Sam says. “Good news is, I was wearing them yesterday when a bunker fell in on my back, which kept my spine from snapping. But they’re gonna need some repairs we’re not gonna be able to make ourselves, unless any of you has a robotics lab in your back pocket.”

“Is there another set anywhere?”

“Sure, in Avengers Tower. So one of us would just need to get halfway across Manhattan without being picked up by a single traffic camera, and get in and out of a heavily automated building that’s currently under a S.H.I.E.L.D. lockdown without being spotted.”

Steve glances at Natasha, who shrugs. He smiles. “Sounds like we’re good to go,” he says. “Oh, hey, Foggy, just one more thing. You wouldn’t happen to have a laser pointer, would you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again I SACRIFICE FOR MY ART as I had to go back and watch all the Foggy scenes in Daredevil S1. Such a tragedy.
> 
> As always, robyngoodfellow performed beta-ing heroics and told me to go to sleep at a reasonable hour. The Die Hard reference and the contents of the Go Bag were all her, and you should really read [her latest](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8621836) and/or [our joint venture](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8561917) because she is hilarious. 
> 
> Up next: we finally meet THE ASSET. *ominous music*


	10. Highway

One thing about Steve that Bucky can never come to terms with is this: no matter how ludicrous his plans might sound when he lays them out, they have this weird tendency to _work._ Which is how Sam is able to go out in broad daylight, in a fucking ball cap and sunglasses, and compel a S.H.I.E.L.D. officer to get in a car with him just because Bucky is aiming a cheap laser pointer at his tie. It’s also how Bucky finds himself dragging Sitwell up eight flights of stairs in an empty, almost-finished building and throwing him through the door and onto the roof. “Got him,” he announces, and when Sitwell tries to scramble away, he grabs him by the collar and plants a boot in his Hydra ass, just so he can say later that he did. “Now, tell us what Zola was up to with Project Insight.”

“Never heard of it,” Sitwell says, struggling.

“No? Then what exactly were you doing on the Lemurian Star?”

“I was throwing up. I get seasick.”

Bucky looks at Steve. “You got a plan to make this asshole talk?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I’m going to give him my stern Captain America look and tell him I’m not angry with him, I’m just disappointed.”

“Really?” Bucky says.

“Of course not,” Steve says. “Natasha, kick him off the roof.”

Sitwell has just enough time to realize how thoroughly screwed he is before he falls. It’s pretty glorious.

“So,” Natasha says, stepping back from the edge, “what kind of flowers are you two thinking about for the wedding?”

“I don’t care,” Bucky says. “Steve can pick, he’s the artist.”

“That’s hurtful, Buck,” Steve says. “This is supposed to be the happiest day of our lives and you’re not even taking an interest.”

“Fine,” Bucky says. “I like roses. Yellow ones.”

“Never mind,” Steve says. “Natasha’s in charge of the flowers. Your taste is terrible.”

Bucky makes a face at him. “Punk.”

“Jerk,” Steve replies, right about the time Sam swoops over the side of the building and drops Sitwell on the roof.

Sitwell is gasping, and as Natasha steps toward him, he holds up both hands in a pleading gesture. “Zola wrote an algorithm,” he blurts. “A program for choosing targets for Project Insight.”

“What targets?” Steve asks sharply.

“You! A… a TV anchor in Cairo, the Undersecretary of Defense, a high school student in Jersey City. Bruce Banner, Claire Temple, anyone who’s a threat to Hydra—now or in the future.”

“How the hell could a piece of software know all that?” Bucky demands, and Sitwell laughs.

“How could it not? The twenty-first century is a digital book, and Zola taught Hydra how to read it. Bank records, voting patterns, e-mails, phone calls, your damn SAT scores. The algorithm evaluates people’s pasts to predict their future.”

Bucky stares at him, feeling sick. It was easier—not easy, but _easier_ —to write off what the Zola-thing said when he thought the analysis was just based on what he did in the Army. But if it was looking at everything from his kindergarten report cards to his fucking Facebook likes, and it still considered him a potential Hydra ally—

“And what then?” Steve demands, while Bucky swallows hard, hoping he isn’t about to puke.

“Oh, my God. Pierce is gonna kill me,” Sitwell moans.

“Cry me a river, you Nazi fuck,” Bucky says, with a fierceness he doesn’t feel, and lines up another kick at Sitwell’s midsection. Just before he can deliver it, though, Sitwell blurts,

“Then the Insight helicarriers scratch people off the list. A few million at a time.”

 

“Hydra doesn’t like leaks,” Sitwell mutters darkly, in the back seat of the car. They’re headed out of D.C.; as soon as they get to relative safety, Steve is going to call Rhodey and convince him to get them all an escort to the U.N., where they’ll hand over Sitwell and the recording Natasha took of his confession.

“So why don't you try sticking a cork in it?” Sam asks, glaring at Sitwell in the rearview mirror. Then he frowns, and says, “B., you okay?”

Bucky looks up. “What? Oh, sure, I’m…” He wants to say he’s fine, he really does, but instead, he finds his eyes going back to Sitwell. “Hey, fuckface,” he says. “Was I on the list?”

“What?” Sitwell says.

Abruptly, Bucky reaches past Steve—who’s stuck in the middle, by virtue of being the smallest—and grabs Sitwell by the lapels of his rumpled suit. “The Insight targets, you shit. Was. I. On. The. List.”

“I don’t know! It was a couple million names, I didn’t memorize every one.”

“Come on, Buck,” Steve says, putting his right hand on Bucky’s shoulder and pressing him back until he reluctantly lets go. “Zola wants you to doubt yourself. You let him make you crazy, he wins.”

“He wins anyway,” Sitwell says, with a high-pitched laugh. “You can’t stop him now. Nobody can stop him n—” And that’s as far as he gets before something lands on the roof of the car, the rear passenger window shatters, and something—no, someone—grabs Sitwell and flings him straight into oncoming traffic.

“Shit!” Sam yells, and slams on the brakes, but not before whoever landed on the roof fires a gun into the passenger cabin. Natasha shoves Bucky toward the driver’s side door, knocking him out of the way of a bullet, but it’s still a minor miracle that nobody ends up shot before Bucky throws himself over Steve and raises the shield. Steve feels the edge of his seatbelt dig into his shoulder as the car jerks to a halt, and a heavy weight rolls off the roof and down the hood of the car. Without serum-enhanced reflexes, it costs Steve valuable seconds to realize that it was a human body—and by then, he’s watching in horror as a figure in heavy black body armor rolls to a stop, then somehow rises to its feet. The figure wears a dust mask and goggles, but when it turns to face the car, Steve knows, with an old soldier’s certainty, that the eyes behind those dark lenses are marking their positions inside the cabin, assessing their relative priority as targets.

Steve narrows his own eyes. If Faust is thinking he’ll go down without a fight, she’s got another think coming.

Natasha is raising one of her two pistols, the only guns that any of them have managed to hang onto over the last few days, when another vehicle strikes them from behind. Steve has enough time to think some poor civilian has crashed into them before he realizes the other car is speeding up, pushing the much-abused rental car straight toward Faust. Just when he thinks a collision is inevitable, he watches her leap up, landing so hard on the hood of the car that her boots dent the metal. In that jump, he can see that Bucky was right; even though it’s an impossibly athletic maneuver, there’s something _off_ about the way she moves, as if her body is denser than it ought to be. When she puts one gloved fist through the windshield, she doesn’t quite manage to rip the wheel off the steering column, but she jerks it so hard that the damaged car goes into a spin, and Steve sees her jump clear just before the car starts to tilt.

Bucky is in motion before the car overbalances, shoving his shield into Sam’s hands and reaching out with his metal hand to tear the door off the car. “Get out,” he shouts, and grabs Steve, just as the car rolls. A second later and they’re flying, exactly like jumping out of the elevator at the Triskelion, only this time there’s a shorter drop and they’re skidding across pavement with a car door under them instead of a shield. The car smashes into a Jersey barrier, crumpling.

For the second time in two days, Steve lands with his left arm underneath him, and the cracked bone lights up with pain. The world grays out for a second or two, and then Bucky is pulling him to his feet and they’re running, dodging cars, with drivers frantically slamming on the brakes as they cross the highway. Natasha is nowhere to be seen, but Sam is there, with the shield, and he tosses it underhand, not at Bucky, but at Steve, who catches the strap with his right hand out of practiced instinct. Sam must have been counting on that, because just as he brings it up in front of him, Faust fires—God, what is that, some kind of rocket launcher?—and Steve doesn’t have a prayer of stopping himself from being thrown over the guardrail.

Bucky gives a completely incoherent scream as he flings himself after Steve, but his instincts kick in as he leaps over the rail, and he lands on his feet at the edge of the underpass. Steve sees him hit the ground, but he’s struggling to get back up himself. Bucky jumps in front of him, shield up, and Steve follows his eyes upward to see that Faust is on the bridge, lining up a shot—

—And then she snaps back when a bullet pings off her goggles, and Steve looks over to see Natasha on the ground as well, with a pistol aimed at Faust. “Get out of here, Rogers,” she shouts, and while Steve’s instincts are still warring between taking cover and running back toward the fight, Bucky makes the decision for him, dragging him behind a bus that’s either parked or deserted on the curb. “Wait for me to distract them and then start running,” he shouts, over the gunfire. “Don’t stop until you can’t run anymore.”

“Like hell I’m leaving you here!” Steve shouts back.

“For fuck’s sake, Steve, do you not understand that you’re the one they’re after? They think they can _use_ me and Nat, but they’ll shoot you on sight! You wanna stop Hydra, you gotta stay alive to do it,” Bucky yells, and then there’s a burst of fire from an automatic weapon, loud and close.

Bucky doesn’t hesitate to put his body between Steve and the hail of bullets that some asshole is pouring into the side of the bus. His eyes meet Steve’s just for a second, and he pulls him in for a kiss, hard and fast and rough, before he shoves him back and lifts the shield. Steve sees what he’s doing but doesn’t have time to react before he charges the guy with the gun, holding up the shield like it’s a battering ram, just like Steve himself used to do. And as much as he hates to admit it, Steve knows Bucky is right. Bucky won’t watch his own six if he’s worrying about getting between Steve and any potential harm; the right thing to do is to get gone. He takes off running, parallel to the underpass, with no idea where he’s heading except _away._

It’s only chance that he rounds the corner just in time to spot Natasha running, too, in the same direction as him, leading Faust away from a knot of civilians on the street. And it’s only chance that he’s looking straight at her when the bullet strikes home.

Steve has seen enough people shot to last him the rest of his life and then some. It’s horrifically familiar, the way Natasha staggers, almost knocked off her feet, before her brain catches up with what’s happened to her body. He watches the color drain out of her face, watches the spray of blood from her shoulder as if it’s in slow motion. Then his eyes trace the path the bullet must have come from, and he sees Faust standing in the street with an automatic weapon in her hands. She’s watching Natasha with cold, calculating eyes, and Steve knows that in another two heartbeats, at best, that gun is going to swing up and Faust is going to take the kill shot. There’s no time for Bucky or Sam to get there, not even time for a plan—not if he doesn’t want to watch Natasha die right there in front of him.

Fortunately for him, running into trouble without a plan is one of the things Steve Rogers does best.

Faust has just enough warning to turn toward Steve as he pelts toward her, but not enough time to bring the gun up before a hundred and fifteen pounds of former super-soldier hits her in a football tackle. It’s like hurling his body into a brick wall, but sheer surprise knocks her off balance, and from there—well, a long gun is no good at close range like this, so she drops it, while he brings up his fist for the one-handed throat punch that Melinda May drilled into him during his aikido training.

It’s a brutal blow—or it would be, if it landed. Faust rolls away almost faster than he can follow, leaving him sprawled on the ground. He managed to lead with his right shoulder when he hit her, but his left arm is singing with pain, and Faust drops back while he’s distracted, dark eyes watching him over the half-face mask. He’s a sitting duck and they both know it; the minute she moves is the minute he’s done for. But something keeps her rooted to the spot, eyes locked on his, while he drags himself to his feet, gritting his teeth and breathing hard.

“Come on,” he says, clenching his right hand into a fist. “I can do this all day.”

The words seem to break whatever spell is holding Faust back. She steps forward, and Steve sees her reach behind her back for the gun in the holster between her shoulder blades.

 _“Hey,”_ Bucky yells, from the mouth of an alley twenty feet away. When Faust turns, he hurls the shield, which strikes her shoulder with enough force to make her hand open and the gun drop. Bucky runs in behind the shield, snatching it out of the air on the rebound and then slamming it into her, ruthlessly, knocking her back several steps. “Pick on somebody your own size,” he snarls, and then she’s back up and he’s drawing a knife from his belt.

Steve watches Bucky fight all the time in training sessions, and there’ve been plenty of times when he’s sErnest him fight for his life, not to mention the lives of the other Avengers and the civilians they try to protect. The difference is that this time it’s Steve’s life Bucky is fighting for. Steve knew Bucky was good, damn good, but he never knew Bucky could be so  _vicious._ He moves unbelievably fast, super-soldier fast, with his metal left hand clenched into a fist and his right hand holding a black-bladed knife that he flips and spins, constantly adjusting his grip and his style to make the blows almost impossible to predict. And Faust… Faust just _takes_ it, returning hit for hit when it suits her, falling back and blocking the knife with the armor plates on her forearms when it doesn’t. And somehow, Bucky is still getting the worst of it. She absorbs every punch he throws as if it was nothing, even when he connects with his metal fist; hits that should be breaking her bones are rolling off her. She almost doesn’t flinch when he flashes the knife up and aims at her face. But she’s still fast enough that he doesn’t cut her, just slices the strap holding the half-mask in place; then, when he bashes her in the chest with the shield and finally knocks her sprawling, she rolls, comes back to her feet, and turns around as the mask falls to the pavement.

Time stops. No, really; Steve always thought that was a figure of speech, but time really does seem to slow to a crawl when he sees her face. Otherwise, how does it all crystallize in his mind so quickly? For the rest of his life, he’ll remember exactly how she looks in this moment. Her dark hair is hastily cropped in something a little too long and messy to call a pixie cut, and she never would have been caught dead without at least her trademark red lipstick, even during the darkest days of the war. But everything else is exactly as Steve remembers: the full lips and high, fine cheekbones that he used to draw as often as she’d stay still for him, trying to memorize every fleetingly perfect detail; the flawless arch of her eyebrows over wide, dark eyes that hold absolutely no recognition at all.

Steve doesn’t remember moving, but he must, because somehow he’s back on his feet and taking a half-step toward her. “Peggy?” he says.

“Who the bloody hell is Peggy?” she asks flatly, and when nobody answers, she reaches behind her and finally pulls her automatic pistol out of its holster.

Things happen fast after that, Steve knows, but he never has more than a vague sense of events when he tries to piece them together later. He knows that Sam swoops in on his Falcon wings and slams both feet into Peggy; he knows she falls, rolls, gets up with the gun in her hand, and aims it at Bucky, who’s standing stock-still, arm drawn back a little as if he was getting ready to throw the knife when he saw her face and froze in mid-action. There’s another gunshot behind them, and Steve turns his head and sees Natasha, with blood soaking the front of her jacket and her arm braced against a parked car so she can hold up the discarded rocket launcher. Then, through the cloud of smoke that also hides Peggy’s escape, black cars with the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo pull up and surround them, sirens blaring. He guesses somebody must drag him over to one of the vans and throw him into a seat; he doesn’t try to resist them. It feels like it’s all happening to somebody else, as if it’s just some kind of terrible dream. But what he does remember later is that throughout all of it, Bucky’s eyes are almost as empty as Peggy’s, and he never makes a sound, not even when Rumlow tosses him into the van and the armored doors slam shut behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew. This one took forever. Everybody I know seems to be having a hard time getting into their writing space right now but for my sake as well as yours, dear reader, I'm trying.
> 
> Once again, Robyngoodfellow, AKA the best beta, has saved you all from some really dumb mistakes in this chapter, and any remaining errors are entirely my own.


	11. Peggy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for internalized homophobia & homophobic language. (Also contains ALL THE FEELINGS, but we’re used to that in this fandom.)

☆ ☆ ☆

Wearing a helmet that’s too big over an Army uniform that’s too big, Steve Rogers stands at attention in the parade line. The other guys are shooting the breeze while they wait for orders, and Steve would love to feel morally superior about taking his duty seriously, but the truth is, nobody wants to talk to him. So when a voice calls, “Recruits, attention!”, he’s the only one who doesn’t have to snap to it. But he is a little bit astounded when a woman—a young woman, in a female version of the SSR officers’ uniform he’s learned to recognize over the last few days—approaches the line. “Gentlemen, I’m Agent Carter,” she says, in a crisp British accent. “I supervise all operations for this division.”

 _Agent,_ Steve repeats to himself; he still hasn’t figured out exactly how the SSR measures rank, except, of course, that literally everybody seems to rank higher than his unproven self. He’s glancing at the insignia on her olive-green jacket, trying to work out in his head what the equivalent rank would be in the regular Army—staff sergeant, maybe?—when one of the guys down the line says loudly, “What’s with the accent, Queen Victoria? I thought I was signing up for the U.S. Army.”

Steve maintains his even expression, mostly, but he wants to scowl. _Hodge._ He’s had Hodge pegged as a bully since practically before his group of recruits got on the bus. The only reason he hasn’t run afoul of the guy yet, he’s pretty sure, is because Hodge took one look at him and decided Steve is too small and weak to even make good sport.

“What’s your name, soldier?” Carter asks.

“Gilmore Hodge, your majesty,” Hodge drawls, clearly entertained by this whole business.

“Step forward, Hodge,” Carter says, and Hodge does, with enough of a swagger to make Steve hate him a little more than he did already. “Put your right foot forward.”

“Ooh, we gonna wrassle?” Hodge says with a leer. “’Cause I got a few moves I know you’ll like.”

“Private Hodge,” Carter says, stepping closer, “are you familiar with the art of jiu-jitsu, wherein your opponent’s size and momentum are used against him?”

“No,” Hodge says, with a smirk, and Steve privately decides this guy doesn’t have the brains of a trained monkey. Based on the way Carter’s eyebrows have drawn together, the poor fool really ought to be running for the hills right about now.

“Neither am I,” Carter says, and punches Hodge in the face.

Steve presses his lips together as Hodge crumples in a heap, willing himself not to smile. He’s got enough experience with guys like Hodge to know that if he even _thinks_ anybody is laughing at him, he’ll come after them later with a chip on his shoulder the size of a Buick. But later, Steve will realize that this moment is when he starts to develop his crush on Peggy Carter.

 

Steve’s heard plenty of horror stories from guys who’ve been through basic training, the ones who were back in Red Hook for a few days before the Army shipped them off to Europe or the South Pacific, and a lot of those stories mentioned the two-mile run. But Steve’s a city kid; he measures distance in blocks, not miles, and two doesn’t sound like that much. He knew his asthma would make this a problem, but he figured he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. Well, he’s come to it, all right—and when he staggers up, significantly behind the rest of the squad, and the drill sergeant shouts, “That flag means we’re only at the halfway point,” he briefly wonders whether praying for the sweet release of death qualifies as a mortal sin. Then the sergeant adds, “First man to bring it to me gets a ride back with Agent Carter,” and he looks up and sees his salvation. The only problem is getting there; even Hodge, the musclebound jerk, doesn’t get ten feet up the flagpole before he slides back down.

“Nobody’s got that flag in seventeen years!” the drill sergeant declares, and Steve thinks, _Baloney. There’s no way the same flag’s been up there all that time. Hell, the flag code says you gotta be able to take a flag down at nightfall, so—_

Wait a minute. Can it really be that simple?

Steve isn’t thinking about impressing anybody; he’s mostly just thinking about whether or not it’s already too late to stave off a full-blown asthma attack, because landing himself in the infirmary will put him so far behind that he’ll probably wash him out of Dr. Erskine’s program. But when he pulls the metal pin out of the flagpole, hands the flag to the drill sergeant, and hops into the passenger seat of the Jeep, he suddenly realizes that he’s sitting next to Agent Carter and has no idea what to do about it.

“Uh,” he says, trying not to audibly wheeze, while she puts the car into gear and pulls onto the road. “Hi. I’m Steve Rogers.”

“Peggy Carter,” she introduces herself.

“I know. I mean,” he adds quickly, “I was there when you taught Hodge a lesson.” He lets himself smile a little, and adds, “Wouldn’t mind learning a little of that jiu-jitsu myself.”

“You didn’t think I was rather too harsh?” Carter says, in a tone that heavily implies she’s quoting someone.

Steve shrugs. “I don’t like bullies,” he says.

“So I hear. You impressed Dr. Erskine quite a bit, you know. He speaks very highly of you.” Carter takes her eyes off the road long enough to give him a once-over, and he’s uncomfortably aware that he’s blushing. “How did you meet him?”

“I got beat up,” Steve says. When she raises an eyebrow, he elaborates, “Got in a fight with a fella who left me knocked out in an alley. When I woke up, I was looking right at an ad for the Stark Expo that was pasted up on the alley wall. I’d been planning on just going home, but when I saw it… I don’t know, it felt like a sign.”

“Did it,” says Carter. She’s got a tone that’s hard to read; he can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic. “And then?”

“They had an enlistment office at the Expo. I thought, well, it’s a fair. I’ll try my luck. Thing is, I’d already tried to enlist a time or… four. I gave them a fake address, but I guess I’m not a very good liar.”

“I never would have guessed,” Carter says dryly, but at least she looks amused.

“Two black eyes and a split lip probably didn’t do wonders for my credibility,” Steve admits. “I don’t know how they got the other forms so fast, but they knew what I’d done. I thought my goose was cooked, but Dr. Erskine just asked me why I did it, so I told him the truth. There are men laying down their lives in this war. I can do that as well as anybody, and I got no right to do less.”

“That’s quite the sentiment,” says Carter. “I can see why he took a shine to you.”

“Do you know him well?” Steve asks.

“I should hope so. I helped him to escape from the Austrian castle where Hydra had him imprisoned.”

“Hydra,” Steve repeats. He’s heard the name kicked around, but there’s woefully little information to be had: nothing in the papers, nothing in the history books, and no one he can ask. “So you must know a lot about them. Anything you’re allowed to tell me, or is it all classified?”

“You believe me,” she says, surprised.

“There some reason I shouldn’t?”

“No,” she says. “But most men don’t let that stop them.”

“Well, I guess I’m not most men.”

Steve says it wryly—it’s such a cliché, Hodge probably says that to three dames a week—but Peggy gives him a long look. “No, I suppose you’re not,” she says, and then she starts telling him about Hydra.

He listens while she explains everything she’s allowed to tell him, and maybe one or two things she’s not, and he thanks her politely when he gets out of the Jeep. And after that, he’s so busy ducking the wrath of both Hodge and Colonel Phillips for a while that he doesn’t get a chance to speak to her again. But every once in a while, he looks up from whatever the Army has him doing and notices her on the edges, watching him.

 

☆ ☆ ☆

The day of the transformation divides Steve’s life sharply into a series of before and afters. Before and after his body changes from small to massive. Before and after Dr. Erskine dies for him, which leaves a deeper mark on him than anybody knows. Before and after Hydra makes it personal.

And, of course, before and after a Nazi spy nearly kills Peggy Carter.

Later, he thinks that if Dr. Erskine hadn’t been literally the first person since his mother who saw anything in him, who believed in him, maybe it wouldn’t have felt quite so much like the end of the world when he died in Steve’s arms. Maybe he could have blinked the tears out of his eyes a second faster. Maybe he would have made it up the stairs and out of the SSR base in time to knock Peggy out of the way of the car with the Hydra agent at the wheel. Maybe she wouldn’t have been hit and gone flying, landing in a crumpled heap on the sidewalk.

He runs to her, but she’s half-sitting up already, waving her arm at him. “Go after him, you bloody fool!” she shouts, and so he does.

When he reads about his own heroics in the paper the next day, he’ll feel as if it all happened to someone else. The feeling of being completely disconnected from reality persists all the way through as his new body takes over, running and leaping and diving like he’s been itching to do his whole life and never _could._ And the rush of triumph when he catches the last vial of serum, just inches before it would’ve smashed on the pavement, only makes him feel like he has further to fall when the spy (Heinz Kruger, his name is, and Steve takes a perverse pleasure in remembering that name so he can curse it for the rest of his life) offs himself with a cyanide pill before he can be brought to justice.

It feels like it takes hours to get back to the SSR base, even though a car pulls up and agents hustle him inside before he gets two blocks from the harbor. At some point in there, he shoves the vial into his pants pocket and immediately forgets all about it. Then doctors and nurses swoop in and hustle him into a lab for a battery of tests—his lungs, his heart, his blood—while at the same time, Senator Brandt and Colonel Phillips take turns grilling him about what the Hydra agent said (not much), what he did (ate a cyanide pill, obviously), what the interior of the U-Boat looked like (he didn’t get a good look, being too busy trying to pull Kruger out of it to pay attention), and what else he saw underwater (nothing; have they _seen_ the East River?). With the rapid-fire barrage of questions, he can’t hear himself think, and it’s only when Phillips is about to leave that he thinks to ask, “What about Agent Carter? She’s okay, right?”

And then he curses himself for not asking sooner, because Phillips’ face tells him everything he needs to know.

 

It didn’t look that bad at first, or so they tell him. She was bruised, shaken, had a few broken bones that were probably going to require surgery, but nothing that seemed unrecoverable. They listened to her when she said she was fine, and that the doctors ought to move on to treating those who’d fared worse in the confrontation with Kruger. They _made her comfortable,_ is what they say, which Steve takes to mean they dosed her with morphine and moved on, meaning to come back to her later. That’s why nobody caught the internal hemorrhage until it was, by their estimation, already too late.

When he sees her, he collapses into the chair by her bed, in shock. She looks faded and gray, like an old photograph. “Peggy,” he says, then realizes he has nothing to follow it up with. “I should have done better,” he says. “I should have been there earlier.”

“Oh, Steve, there’s no need to be so dramatic,” Peggy murmurs. “I was doing my duty, and I’m not sorry. Someone once told me that there are men laying down their lives in this war. I can do it as well as they, and I’ve no right to do less.”

Something crystallizes inside Steve in that moment. He looks at this woman, who was willing to lay down her life not just once, but half a dozen times on SSR missions before he ever met her, and who did the same thing again today, and he thinks about all the people Hydra has already killed in this war, and he thinks, _The bastards aren’t getting her, too._

There’s a syringe sitting on the table next to the bed. Steve’s mother was a nurse; he knows how to give an injection. His newly broad hands are suddenly shaking; he almost fumbles the vial and drops it while he’s filling the syringe with blue liquid, but he takes a deep breath, steadies himself, and reaches for her. “What—” she says, but it’s too late; he’s already sunk the needle into her arm and pressed the plunger.

Peggy’s eyes go wide, and she gasps. Steve knows, from his own experience a few hours earlier, that the serum feels cold going into a vein, and then it feels like fire. Her eyes lock onto the vial in his hand, and he sees her understand. “Oh, you bloody idiot,” she says, in a voice barely above a whisper. “What have you done? That was the last of it. They’ll never be able to recreate the formula now.”

“Maybe that’s for the best,” Steve says. She’s right; it _is_ a terrible choice he’s making, without consulting any of the other skinny asthmatics who could have benefited from the serum like he has. But without Dr. Erskine, what are the chances the Army will give the formula to guys who need it? He doesn’t want to be responsible for the Hodges of the world getting more Hodge-like, no matter how much it might contribute to the war effort. “Anyway, this is what Dr. Erskine would have wanted. He loved you, you know.”

Peggy squeezes her eyes shut. “I think you’d better go, Steve,” she says. “And for the love of God, take that away with you and get rid of it as soon as you can. If they find out what you’ve done, they’ll court-martial you.”

Steve’s hand closes on the syringe, but he frowns at her and says, “I don’t care what they do to me.”

“I do,” Peggy says. “I very much do. Go.”

Steve goes. But he thinks that if the price of saving her life is that she’ll never want to see him again, it’s worth it.

 

☆ ☆ ☆

They’ve finally sent him overseas, so that’s something.

Actually, no, it isn’t. It’s less than nothing, because it confirms for Steve what he already suspected: Senator Brandt never had any intention of following through on the promise he made to help Steve get his own command one day, if he played ball and obeyed orders and raised lots of money for the war. Steve’s done all that and more, and he’s still barely allowed to walk around the Army camp by himself, in case he wanders too close to any actual danger. But at least he’s doing something a little more direct to help the troops now, right? He says it every night: not everybody can shoot a gun or drive a tank, but everybody can _serve._ The USO is critical for keeping up the soldiers’ morale and everybody knows it, just look how much good Bob Hope and Bette Davis are doing by providing the men with entertainment, so maybe he can…

Goddammit, Steve’s not even any good at lying to his own damn _self._

The disaster of an afternoon performance is long since over and he’s probably supposed to be getting cleaned up and ready for the next one, but he can’t bring himself to go back just yet. He takes out his notebook and starts sketching, barely realizing what his hands are doing until the outline of a trained monkey on a unicycle takes shape, holding his own comically oversized prop shield. He’s shading in the wheel when a quiet voice behind him says, “Hello, Steve.”

He turns. It’s Peggy, of course. His first thought is that she looks good— _well,_ he should say, she looks well. For a minute he thinks it’s strange (though probably fortunate) that the serum didn’t change her height or bulk up her muscles the way it did for him, but he guesses it was the Vita-Rays that did that. It’s not any less of a miracle, though; if he hadn’t been there, he’d never believe she was on the brink of death a few months earlier. “Hi,” he says. “Are you… okay?”

It’s the first time he’s seen her look less than absolutely sure about anything, but she nods. “I’m very well, thank you,” she says. He waits for the inevitable question—and he doesn’t have any idea what he’ll say if she asks—but after a brief hesitation, she sits down beside him instead. “That was quite a performance,” she says.

So she saw that, huh? Great. “Had to improvise a little. The crowds I’m used to are usually more… twelve.”

She’s not smiling, but he thinks she might be biting the inside of her cheek to stop herself. “I understand you’re America’s new hope.”

He shrugs. “Bond sales take a ten percent bump in every state I visit.”

“Is that Senator Brandt I hear?”

“At least he’s got me doing this,” Steve points out. “Phillips would’ve had me stuck in a lab.”

“And these are the only two options? A lab rat or a dancing monkey?”

“I don’t know. It’s just, I…”

“What?”

He doesn’t know how to explain it to her, without spilling all the things he can’t say. How he spent his whole life trying to avoid being pigeonholed into the one role that was open to him—small and weak and different in a way the school bullies back in Brooklyn were always too happy to label for him: _fairy, invert, queer._ How all his efforts to prove he was _more_ than that have never prevented a single bully from kicking dirt in his face, and how every loss just compressed more determination into his small frame to show them all that he was good enough for _something,_ even if that something was dying on the battlefield like a real hero. How he lies awake at night thinking about how disappointed Dr. Erskine would be that he gave Steve this amazing chance, and all Steve could do with it is let Senator Brandt turn him into exactly the kind of freak show attraction he was always afraid of becoming. “All I dreamed about for so long was going overseas, being on the front lines, serving my country,” he says. “I finally got everything I wanted… and I’m wearing tights.”

Peggy is opening her mouth to respond to that when there’s a sudden commotion a few hundred feet away: an ambulance pulling up to the infirmary building, corpsmen running out to unload a wounded soldier on a stretcher. Steve’s jaw clenches. “Looks like they’ve been through hell.”

“These men more than most,” Peggy says. “Your audience contained all that’s left of the 107th. The rest were killed or captured—we believe they’re being held in a prison factory thirty miles behind the lines.”

“The 107th?” Steve repeats, startled.

“Yes. What?”

“Nothing, I… That was my dad’s unit. Hell of a coincidence.”

“Or another sign, perhaps,” Peggy says.

Steve turns and looks at her. “What?”

“Phillips won’t send troops to rescue the captives,” Peggy says. “And rightly so. In a direct attack, he’d lose more men than he’d save. But a small team—even just one or two people with exceptional skills and training—can sometimes go where an army can’t.”

“Like breaking a scientist out of a Hydra facility,” Steve says, understanding. “Except easier, because once you got in and freed a few prisoners, they could help you overwhelm the guards—” Then he shakes his head. “You’d still have to get through thirty miles of hostile territory undetected.”

“I believe I know someone who could help with that. It would be dangerous, of course.”

“You don’t sound worried,” Steve says.

“That’s the thing about nearly dying,” Peggy says. “When you’re given a second chance, you come to feel as if you’re meant to do something more.”

Steve looks up, meets her eyes for a moment, and then looks down again. What Peggy’s proposing is crazy, reckless, and stupid—which ought to be right up his alley. But honestly, it might be all he can do to climb the stairs and walk onto the stage for his evening performance. “I got somewhere to be,” he mumbles, and leaves her standing there, watching him with a disappointed expression.

One of the problems with being a super-soldier is that it’s damn near impossible to convince your boss that you’re too sick to perform a song-and-dance number, so Steve goes onstage with a hastily typed script pasted on the back of the prop shield. The volunteer he usually calls out of the audience is replaced by Irene, the busty blonde who he hoists in the air on the prop motorcycle every night, and now she gets to deliver the line about socking ol’ Adolf on the jaw, which gets a thunderous cheer from the men, coming from her. But Steve is only half present for the performance, and by the time they finally let him offstage, he’s made a decision. He’s going to go find Peggy and ask her to let him help. He might be a goddamn phony who’s lost every fight of his entire life, but she’s a trained SSR agent with a history of successful missions behind her; maybe he can use what little pull he has as Captain America to talk to Phillips and convince him to give her a shot.

The only problem with his plan is that Peggy is already gone.

Phillips is _furious._ “I sure wouldn’t go in there,” his aide tells Steve, outside the command tent. “He put Stark through the wringer when he found out Agent Carter had taken off. I’ve never seen anybody talk to him like that before—well, a couple of ladies, maybe, but nobody in government.”

“Wait. Stark?” Steve demands. “As in _Howard_ Stark? He’s here?”

The aide nods. “They brought him in to check out some captured weapons. They figure he was the last guy on base to see Carter before she bugged out.”

“Where is he?” says Steve.

 

“Listen, I didn’t know what Carter was planning,” Stark is insisting, five minutes later, when Steve has him pinned against the wall of the old aircraft hangar they’ve given him for a field laboratory. “I told Phillips that myself, and you can tell him I don’t appreciate his sending my own craftsmanship in here to rough me up. It’s uncivilized.”

Steve lets go of Stark’s collar, reluctantly, and Stark backs away from him, rubbing his jaw. “Phillips didn’t send me,” he says. “So she just took one of the guns and took off?”

“A gun and a Jeep. It’s thirty miles to Krausberg; she can’t exactly walk it.”

“Krausberg?”

“The prison. Schmidt’s converted it into some kind of weapons factory, making those,” Stark says, gesturing across the lab at one of the tables. Steve noticed the guns on his way in: futuristic, evil-looking things. “Wow, Brandt really does treat you like a mushroom, doesn’t he?”

Steve ignores that. “Why isn’t Phillips sending somebody after her? She’s going to need help out there.”

“First off, ‘help’ in this case would be bringing her back in handcuffs,” Stark says. “SSR agents get some wiggle room, but she’s still bucking the local chain of command here. You know when the Army takes kindly to that? Never. Second, if she hasn’t already gotten caught, she’s deep in enemy territory at this point. It would be _stupid,_ is what I’m saying.”

“Fine,” Steve says, “say somebody wants to do something stupid. If they left now, is there any chance at all they could catch up with her?”

“Sure, if they had a plane,” Stark says. “But even if Phillips was willing to send a rescue party, chances are she’ll get caught before he can even get it organized. They won’t go easy on her because she’s a woman, either. Soldiers can be made into forced labor. Spies mostly get shot on sight.”

Steve nods, briskly. “Okay,” he says, reaching for the door handle. It’s his fault Peggy is out there alone; his fault for not having the balls to stand up to Brandt long before this and insist on running some real missions; even more his fault for not hearing what Peggy was saying right to his face, thinking she was talking about _him_ when she asked if the only two choices for a super-soldier were being a lab rat or a dancing monkey. Even if she had been, he sees now that she would’ve been right. Isn’t he the guy who used to pray for the chance to be a soldier and make his inevitable death count for something, instead of wasting his last days hacking up a lung in a Brooklyn tenement? _You were meant for more than this,_ Peggy said, and she was right. She saw what needed doing and had the guts to try; he’s got—he smiles grimly to himself—no right to do any less. So he’ll just have to find an unguarded vehicle and drive like a bat out of hell and hope that by some miracle, he can catch up to her before it’s too late.

“Hey, Rogers,” Stark calls after him, as he reaches for the door handle.

Steve turns. “What?”

Stark grins at him. “When are you gonna ask if I’ve got a plane?”

 

“You know,” Steve says, twenty minutes later, in the cockpit of the Lockheed, “I really expected a flying car.”

“I left Gabrielle in London,” Stark says, pushing the throttle forward. “Little too conspicuous for the front. I’ll tell you what, though, you bring Carter back alive, I’ll let you take her for a spin.”

“No offense, but I’m surprised you’re willing to do this for her,” Steve says.

“I’m not the one who’s putting his tail on the line here, buddy,” says Stark. “I’m a civilian, I’m rich, and I’m the Army’s number one weapons contractor. They can’t touch me. But, listen, if you make it, I’ll put in a word for you at the court-martial.”

“Thanks,” Steve says dryly, and Stark laughs.

“Seriously, though, Carter’s a hell of a woman. You know how she got away with what she did today? Walked into my office, asked to see one of the Hydra weapons, I handed her one, and she hit me in the face with it. Technically,” he adds, “not the worst date I’ve had in Italy.” Steve snorts, and Stark laughs. “Carter sees what she wants and goes after it. I like that in a woman. If the two of you do manage to take down this Hydra operation, you tell her I’m willing to stop off in Lucerne on the way back for a late-night fondue.”

Steve blinks. What does—did Stark just—that’s it, he _has_ to buckle down and learn French. “About that,” he says. “Getting back, I mean.”

“Here.” Stark hands him a device—a radio transponder, he thinks. “When you’re ready for extraction, use this to call me.”

Steve eyes it dubiously. “You sure it works?”

“It’s been tested more than you have, pal,” Stark says. Then, without warning, he rolls the plane to the left, which almost knocks Steve sprawling. Something goes _bang_ against the fuselage, and Steve shouts, “What was that?”

“Anti-aircraft gun. Don’t worry about it.” Stark sends the plane into a nosedive, and Steve blanches. He never got up the guts to ride the Cyclone at Coney Island when he was a kid, but he used to imagine it would be just like this. It doesn’t take him long, though, to realize that he can’t put another life at risk, no matter how nonchalant Stark is about it. He straps on a parachute and is opening the jump door when Stark says, “Get back in! I can get you closer than this.”

“Get out of here,” Steve yells back at him, over the noise of a sudden burst of fire. “And don’t forget you owe me a ride in that flying car when this is over.”

He jumps.

It’s the dumbest thing he’s ever done in his life.

He kind of loves it.

 

He follows Peggy’s lead when it comes to fighting his way into the Hydra factory: he doesn’t try to be subtle, and a lot of guys get punched in the face before he gets to the first batch of prisoners. After he lets them out and hands the keys he took from a guard to the big guy in the bowler hat and the impressive handlebar moustache, he says, “I’m looking for a woman. Have you guys seen her?”

“Pal, if I’d seen a dame in the last three weeks, I’d damn well remember it,” the big guy tells him.

“They took a number of men to the isolation ward,” another guy pipes up. This one’s got a British accent, and Steve takes that as a hopeful sign. “I’m afraid we haven’t seen them since. If your friend is being held somewhere, it may be there.”

“Which way?” Steve asks, and the British guy points. He tells them where he’s setting the rendezvous, promises to meet them there with anyone else he finds, and takes off at a run.

The halls narrow as he gets further from the factory floor, and he’s not sure if the rooms actually get smaller and darker, or if he just imagines it. Too many of them are filled with the same kind of medical equipment that haunted Steve’s nightmares after his mother’s time in the TB ward. And then he comes around a corner and finds Peggy, standing over an unconscious Hydra soldier and shuffling through a stack of papers written in German. The Hydra weapon is slung over her shoulder, she has a few visible bruises, and the jacket and trousers she’s wearing are filthy and ripped, as if she’s been through a couple of fights to get this far, but overall, she looks... not at all in need of rescuing and absolutely unsurprised to see him. She looks up and says, “You’re late.”

“Well, my ride left without me,” Steve says. He’s surprised he even has it in him to mouth off; he’s so relieved to see her that he hardly knows what to do with himself. But a real soldier would stay on mission, so he says, “Are you okay? You look like thirty miles of bad road.”

“Oh, how many hours have you been waiting to use that line?” Peggy says, in a sweetly biting tone that he immediately adores. “Was it more than one?”

“The serum wasn’t designed to fix my sense of humor, I guess,” he says, which wrings a smile out of her, against all odds. “Did you find anyone else in this section?”

“All dead, I’m afraid. And what do you mean, anyone _else?”_

“The prisoners in the cells downstairs. I let them out.”

“You did what?” Peggy says, and then, “Bloody hell!”

“I told them to make a distraction because I had to come look for you.”

“You raised every alarm in this place,” she says. “As soon as they realize they’ve lost control, they’ll hit the self-destruct button!”

“The what?” Steve says, but she’s already grabbing him with one hand and stuffing the files in a knapsack with the other.

“We rather urgently need to run now,” she tells him, right before they hear the first explosion.

 

He gets his first real look at Johann Schmidt, the Red Skull, on a walkway above the factory floor; throws his first couple of punches at him there, too, but Zola hits a lever to retract the walkway, and Peggy pulls Steve back as he’s about to lunge and get his hands around Schmidt’s throat. “What are you doing?” Steve snaps, as she hauls him off the walkway. “I had him—” And then there’s a terrific explosion on the floor below, and he realizes: he _might_ have taken Schmidt with him, but it’s much more likely he would’ve just fallen to his own certain death. “Sorry,” he says, realizing that he’s so shaken by the confrontation with Schmidt and his horrifying tear-away face that he isn’t being very rational. “You were right.”

“About?” she prompts, with one eyebrow raised.

“Everything,” he admits.

“And what will you do next time?”

“Um. Do as Peggy says?” he says sheepishly, and she nods, satisfied.

“There’s a gantry,” she says, pointing to a narrow beam that crosses the gap. “We can use that to cross.”

It’ll be like walking a tightrope, but he’s not exactly in a position to argue, is he? One thing he’s not bending on, though: “You first.”

“Fine,” she huffs at him, and sets a booted foot on the beam. She moves quickly, and it holds up under her weight while she crosses; then it gives an almost imperceptible shift, and she almost runs the last few steps, hops up over the opposite rail, and shouts, “Come on!”

Steve is just setting his foot on the beam when there’s a sudden explosion below, and the whole thing lurches, making him jump back. He’s barely back on solid ground when the whole structure gives out in a squeal of metal, crashing to the floor two stories below.

Steve blinks sweat and smoke out of his eyes and stares across the impossible gap at Peggy. “I’ll find another way out,” he shouts. “You go, get out of here.”

“Bloody hell,” Peggy mutters, and then she looks straight across at him. The heat from the fires has made the curls in her hair go limp, and her usually impeccable makeup has smudged into dark rings under her eyes, but the reason this is the picture that freezes into his mind, ready to stick with him in perfect, timeless detail for seventy years, is that her expression is perfectly calm, and it makes her about the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

Clearly, without raising her voice, she says, “Not without you, Steven. Never without you. Now stop stalling and come here.”

 _Holy Mother of God,_ Steve thinks. She’s telling him to _jump_ it.

And then he realizes something else: he’s pretty sure he can.

Aside from the almost-dying part of it, it turns out he likes that too.

 

Peggy hasn’t slept in almost thirty hours, but she’s still the one who organizes the soldiers into groups by their former units, with at least one officer in each, and gets the men started on their march away from the prison camp. Some of the guys balk at marching in the dark, especially after winning a fight, but Steve is sure Axis troops will be coming to check on the column of smoke rising from the remains of the Hydra factory as soon as it’s light. At some point, Stark’s transponder got crushed beyond repair, so he can’t call in air support, and everybody who isn’t wounded or sick is half-starved at best. Without the element of surprise, they won’t win the next fight, so their only hope is to try to disappear into the local landscape as much as possible.

There’s one group of misfits who decline to be split up, so Steve arbitrarily declares them all his aides-de-camp and sends them off to run errands. The big guy with the moustache, Dugan, is in charge of finding drivers for the trucks they’ve just liberated; the Japanese guy, Morita (who quickly corrects that he’s _Nisei,_ which Steve will get him to explain later, but for now it means he was born in Fresno and isn’t taking any shit about it) has a little medical experience, so he gets to triage the sick and injured who’ll fill those trucks. The black soldier, Jones, speaks a couple of languages, so he and Dernier are tasked with sorting out anybody who’s Allied but doesn’t speak English; Falsworth, the Brit, is a godsend, because as an officer, he has the experience to sort out the supplies they pillaged on the way out of Krausberg and the balls to stand up to anybody who doesn’t like his methods. Without these guys, Steve thinks, they’d be dead in the water; they’d never get everybody safely away from Krausberg by sunrise.

But without Peggy, they’d probably just be dead, period.

When he calls a halt after an hour of marching, once all the men and vehicles are under the tree canopy and the Nazis will have a harder time finding them with an aerial reconnaissance, Steve finds Peggy sitting by herself, prodding at her ribs like they hurt. He mentally berates himself for telling Morita to check the _men_ for injuries and sits down beside her. “How bad is it?” he asks.

“Not very,” she says. “Cracked a few ribs, I think.”

“That’s not bad?” Steve says, skeptical.

“Not for me.” She looks up and meets his eyes. “You remember I broke some bones when I was struck by the car?”

“Yeah. I was worried about you,” Steve says, without thinking.

“You needn’t have been. I heal so quickly now that I stayed on crutches for two weeks longer than I needed them, just to avoid awkward questions. It’s an odd sort of blessing, really,” she adds. “It seems those bones have healed stronger. I ought to have broken my hand in that last fight, and I haven’t. Look.” She holds out her hand and flexes the fingers. “Good as new.”

“Huh,” Steve says. He wishes he could compare notes, but he’s been in exactly two fights since he got the serum. “Peggy,” he says. “Thanks for giving me the push I needed.”

“Thank me if we avoid the brig when we get back,” she says.

“It’s okay. I’m gonna tell them it was my idea.”

“The hell you say,” she says. “This was my plan and you’re not stealing the credit for it.”

“That’s not what I—” he starts to say, when he realizes she’s laughing at him again. “It’s just, I have some pull with Senator Brandt, and if I tell him I—”

“Steve,” Peggy says, pointing to a group of men walking past them. Every one of them looks like he’s aged ten years in the last few weeks, but they’re smiling; one of them gives another one a friendly shove that’s achingly familiar to Steve somehow, like something out of a different life. “Those men are alive right now because of us. Measured against that, whatever this might cost me is worth it.”

“I’ve never met anyone like you before, Agent Carter,” Steve says, and then shuts his mouth abruptly, embarrassed, feeling like he’s gone too far.

“I suppose that makes two of us, Captain America,” Peggy says, and Steve is still blushing bright red when Morita comes over to grouse at him about a broken fuel line on one of the supply trucks.

 

☆ ☆ ☆

Steve is standing at the bar, ostensibly ordering refills but really mostly taking a minute away from Dugan’s singing voice—which was surprisingly good, up until about two beers ago, and has been sharply declining in quality ever since—when all of the conversations suddenly trail off into silence, and he turns around and finds himself looking at Peggy. She’s out of uniform, wearing a red dress, and even Steve, whose tastes have never run that way before, finds his eyes drawn to her like she’s a magnet. He has no idea what to do with the fact that she crosses the pub and walks straight up to him.

“Captain,” she says, and he stands at attention.

“Agent Carter.” He’s aware that the eyes of every guy in the place have latched onto her, and he turns and raises an eyebrow at Dugan, who takes the hint and starts singing again.

Peggy smiles. “I see your crack squad is prepping for duty.”

“I’m sure the music you’re used to is more, uh… on key.”

“Actually, I prefer music one can dance to,” she says. “With the right partner, of course.” He’s trying to figure out how to react to that when she says, “Howard has some equipment he wants you to try. Tomorrow morning, 0800?”

“I’ll be there,” Steve says.

She nods, and she’s turning to walk out of the pub when he swallows hard and calls after her, “Can I buy you a drink?”

“It looks like you’ve bought quite a few already,” she says, with a glance at the table that his crack squad is currently drinking itself under. He’s trying to keep his face from falling when she says, “You could, however, walk me home.”

Fifteen minutes later, they’re walking down the street, and he’s still trying to figure out how her arm got linked around his. It’s been a while since the air raid sirens have gone off, which means other people are out walking— _couples_ are out walking, on _dates._ Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, is this a date? Does he _want_ this to be a date? That’s such a weird thought that he almost trips over his own feet, and she says, “Are you all right?”

“Uh, yeah. I guess stage training only gets you so far. Peggy, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

“No time like the present,” she says, and looks at him expectantly.

Steve takes a deep breath and says, “Do you want to join my squad?”

Peggy abruptly stops walking. “That,” she says, after a moment, “is not the question I was expecting.”

“I, um,” says Steve. “I mean, if you don’t, I’d understand. Especially after that business with the medals.” Nobody got in trouble, but they didn’t offer Peggy a medal, either, even after he told them he wasn’t taking one he hadn’t earned while the person who deserved it got overlooked again. “But if you did—on paper you’d be second in command, but really you’d be the intelligence officer, which would mean I’d have to listen to you. Not that I wouldn’t listen to you anyway. I mean,” he says, because she’s giving him a look that probably means she thinks he’s gone completely around the bend, “I’m good at punching things, but I’m not good at subtle. I need somebody who’s willing to… to put a check on me if I’m going too far. To keep me from making stupid mistakes.”

“Hmm,” Peggy says, as she starts to walk again. “Not many men would admit that they needed that. Especially not to a woman.”

“I don’t know why. I had a mom, and she was a hell of a lot smarter than me. And she would’ve slapped me for cussing there, sorry. Anyway, I’m not gonna be offended if you say no. I just thought… maybe you’d want another option.”

“And you think you can convince them to send a woman out in the field with six men?”

“Don’t worry, Miss, Captain America will protect your virtue,” he says, in such a ridiculously pompous tone that she gives an extremely unladylike snort and starts laughing. “But seriously, if you’re worried about it—”

“I think my virtue will be fine, thank you,” she says. As if to prove her point, she goes up on her toes, kisses his cheek, and then walks into the building they’ve stopped in front of. “0800, Captain,” she calls back to him, before she shuts the door.

Steve never does know how long he stands there with his mouth hanging open, staring at nothing, and it doesn’t occur to him until he’s more than halfway back to the barracks that he should probably wipe the lipstick off his cheek. He honestly doesn’t know if he liked what just happened or not. But he wonders if maybe it’s worth trying it again to find out.

Which is one of the things that makes it such horrifically bad timing when, at about 0756 the next morning, Private Lorraine takes it upon herself to answer the question for him.

 

☆ ☆ ☆

After the Private Lorraine incident, Steve _really_ never expects Peggy to speak to him again, so he’s stunned when, just a little while before his squad is due to head out into the field for the first time, Peggy shows up in Phillips’ war room. Her hair is pulled back, and she’s wearing a dark blue jacket and pants with a lot of pockets, along with a pack and canteen and a well-used rifle slung across her back. The one splash of bright color on her is the English flag patch sewn on her shoulder, which prompts Dugan to dub her Miss Union Jack, and her to order him never to speak again. When she catches Steve eyeing it, she shrugs, looks pointedly at the star on his chest, and says, “I wasn’t about to let you have all the fun.” He can’t tell if that means he’s forgiven or not, but he decides to act like he is, and ignore—for now—the fact that every time he turns his back, he can feel her eyes on him, watching him like she’s trying to figure him out.

The mission is successful, and so is the next one, and the one after that. Hydra bases go down in Austria, in Poland, in Russia—and gradually, Peggy’s attitude toward Steve thaws. He makes sure the guys treat her well and respectfully, but he doesn’t have to be very persuasive about it; she’s winning them over all on her own, not to mention saving their asses more often than not. One day she’s up on a ridge with her rifle set up for sniping and her shot takes down a hostile he never even spotted. He turns around and salutes her, and as soon as they regroup, she tears into him so hard about giving away her position that he knows he’s finally officially forgiven.

A week or two after _that,_ he’s sitting outside the barracks with his shield beside him, sipping coffee out of his canteen and watching while Jones, shirtless and sweating, trounces some idiot from another unit in a wrestling match, when Peggy drops onto the bench beside him and says, without preamble, “He has rather a lovely body, doesn’t he?”

Steve almost chokes and drops his canteen. Peggy catches it, deftly, and hands it back to him, while he sputters. “Peggy, you shouldn’t say things like that,” he says. “I know you’re a nice girl, but if anybody else heard—”

“Nice girls aren’t allowed to have eyes in America?” By now he recognizes that tiny hint of a smirk; she’s teasing him. “You told me you’d studied art. You must recognize that there’s a certain aesthetic in play.”

“I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Liar.”

If he tells her he’s not, he’s lying again, so he just clears his throat and looks away, and he swears she deliberately waits until he’s taking another sip of the coffee to say, “I kissed one of the girls I was at Bletchley with, you know.”

This time, after the worst coughing fit he’s had since he quit having asthma, Steve gives up the coffee as a lost cause and turns to face her. “Peggy,” he says, “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but—”

“I think I’m trying to have a conversation with you about the thing you’re hiding from everyone,” she says, and the rush of heat to his face makes it impossible to deny it.

The thing is, Steve _has_ been hiding this from everyone—since about 1927, in fact. He was still a kid when he realized that he thought about boys the way the boys in his class thought about girls. He asked his mother what sodomy was, once, after it came up in a particularly fiery sermon he heard, and he’s never forgotten his shock—not because it sounded scandalous and sinful, but because it meant that there were other people besides him who wanted that to be an _option._ He even hinted at it in Confession, once, when he was about fourteen and the secret had gotten to be too much to carry, and Father Connolly got real quiet for a couple of minutes, then gave Steve a mortifying lecture about how lust was one thing and fornication (thank God he didn’t say the other word, or Steve might have died on the spot) was another and _then,_ to Steve’s complete astonishment, he asked if Steve had given thought to joining the priesthood, because a life of celibacy was better than a life of sin. Steve hadn’t, because he was keenly aware that he might have a _little_ too much of a temper for holy orders, but celibacy? He figured that was a thing he could do. Hell, it wasn’t as if he was getting any better offers.

But here’s another thing: it was easy not to think too much about what he was missing when his old body used up most of its energy just staying alive. His new one? It _wants_ things. And lately, it’s becoming increasingly dissatisfied about having to make do with a few quick jerking motions while he’s alone in the shower.

“Does anybody else know?” he asks, in a voice that sounds strangled, even to himself.

“If they do,” Peggy says, “then no one’s said anything about it in my hearing. But if they did, I don’t think it would matter nearly as much to them as the fact that you’ve saved all of their lives half a dozen times over.”

“Yeah, well, try telling Phillips and see how fast this whole Captain America thing gets handed off to somebody else,” Steve says, and he’s a little startled at the bitterness in his own voice. “Somebody _normal.”_

“I have no intention of telling anyone,” Peggy says. “I just wanted to ask: is it only men, always, or are you a bit more flexible than that?”

Steve is floundering; honestly, he’s so stunned that she’s still here, talking to him, after what he just admitted, that it doesn’t occur to him to do anything _but_ be honest. “Peggy, I really like you,” he says. “I think I might even be in love with you. But you deserve somebody who can give you everything you want.”

“And you know what that is, do you?”

“Well, I… I mean, a woman like you deserves someone who’d only think about you. Who’d want to… you know… make love to you all the time,” he says, in a rush. “Listen, I’ve tried to stop thinking about men that way. God knows I’ve tried, but I _can’t._ I don’t know that I’d ever, uh, do anything about it—”

“Because it’s a sin?” she says, with a trace of amusement.

“Don’t laugh at me for what I believe in, okay? None of this is easy for me. I can’t even believe we’re _talking_ about this.”

“You’re right, of course,” she says. “I’m sorry. But, Steve…”

“Yeah?”

“When I became a field agent,” Peggy says, “I decided that if I were to be killed in this job, I wanted to die with no regrets. I didn’t want to die a virgin, so I took care of that quite some time ago. Do you think that’s awful?”

“No,” Steve says. “I think it’s your choice.”

“Good,” Peggy says. “So do I. But there was something else I wanted more than that. I don’t think I even realized it until I met Dr. Erskine. Do you know what he told me, when I asked him why he was so sure about you? He told me that he was looking for qualities beyond the physical.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Steve says.

“You have a very nice body, Steve, but it’s not the thing I like best about you. It’s all right if mine isn’t the thing you like best about me. I know you’re trying to do right by me, and I love you for that, but you do tend to divide the world into black and white. If we were to be together, I’d expect you to be faithful; that would only be fair. But I wouldn’t ask you never to look at a man or think of a man again, so long as it was always me you went home with. If that’s not what you want, I’ll understand entirely, but you ought to at least consider that perhaps you have another option.”

Peggy gets up to walk away, and Steve thinks: she’s right. He should take some time and think about this. After all, it’s not like he’s _never_ thought about being with a woman, it’s just that there’s less… intensity… to those thoughts. He should decide if this is something he wants, and if it would be fair to her, and if he—

He gets about that far before he realizes he’s already stood up from the bench and followed her.

“Peggy,” he calls, and when she turns back, he’s not thinking about right and wrong anymore. He’s thinking that she’s one of the bravest and kindest and best people he knows, and that she’s figured out the thing about him that he’s worked hardest to hide and just accepted it, without judging him or trying to change him. He’s thinking that it’s the same way he feels about her; he wants to know everything about her, good and bad, and take care of her and do whatever it takes to make her happy, and if that isn’t love, then he guesses he doesn’t know what is.

Mindful of her reputation, he pulls her into the shadow of the barracks before he kisses her, and he knows he’s fumbling and uncertain and it occurs to him that he’s probably not even as good at it as the girl at Bletchley, but to his amazement, she’s kissing him back. It’s not urgent and feverish and passionate, like some of his darker fantasies, but it feels good, and if it makes her happy, then he’s willing to put in the effort to get better at it.

“I thought it over,” he says, when they pull apart.

“And?” Peggy says, her face very close to his.

“I think,” Steve says, “that I could do this all day.” And then she’s laughing and he’s laughing and this is when he realizes that he and Peggy have fallen in love with each other not because of their bodies, but in spite of them.

 

☆ ☆ ☆

In 1957, the surviving Howling Commandos are reunited at an interview for the first of many television specials about Captain America’s legacy. In 2011, at Nick Fury’s personal request, an executive at CBS will dig up those tapes and deliver them to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s New York headquarters, and Steve Rogers will sit in a dark room and watch his friends, who look older on the tape than he does, laugh and one-up each other with their wildest war stories. It’s only when the interviewer asks one particular question that they all grow quiet and somber.

 _Hell of an agent,_ Dugan calls her. _Braver than any ten men in the 107 th combined,_ Falsworth adds. Jones calls her the smartest person he’s ever met in his life, and Morita says she was the best soldier of any of them, period.

But it’s Dernier who says the thing that sticks, and that gets used in that documentary and every one after it.

“Captain America fell on the same day Agent Carter did,” he says, in his hard-won English. “It just took him a little longer to hit the ground, that’s all.”

 

☆ ☆ ☆

Steve is never quite sure afterwards what it is that happens in those final moments when he fights Johann Schmidt. He sees Schmidt take the cube in his hand, and he sees a rift open up into something that looks a lot like what the pulp magazines told him space would look like, and for just a minute, it looks like… it looks like Schmidt has control of the cube, like he’s bending it to his will. A blast of some kind of energy hits Steve, encasing his body in a blue glow for a moment before it throws him across the inside of the Valkyrie, and he feels, impossibly, the effects of the serum on his body start to unravel. It’s the opposite of the stretching and cracking and _becoming_ that he felt inside Erskine’s machine, but it doesn’t hurt any less; it’s like the Vita-Rays and the serum are being drained out of his body at the same time, and Schmidt is staring at the cube with something between triumph and wonder.

Steve tries to get up, but his body betrays him. He pitches forward, goes down on his knees, and can only stare helplessly as the cube glows brighter and brighter in Schmidt’s hand. His glove burns away, and then his seared red flesh starts to burn as well, and Schmidt opens his mouth and screams, but the Tesseract is blazing brighter and brighter until there’s a final burst of blue energy and Schmidt—

Schmidt disintegrates, and is gone.

Steve is still and quiet on the floor of the Valkyrie for the space of maybe three heartbeats after it happens, unable to believe that it’s over so quickly. Then a wave of pain and nausea hits him and he pushes himself up, trying to make it to the radio console. He has to leave his shield abandoned on the metal floor while he crawls the last few steps to the chair, and pulling himself up is one of the hardest things he’s ever done in his life, but he has to do it. The navigation pane has a blinking triangle in the center—the plane—and its trajectory is carrying it straight toward New York City.

Steve starts to pull back on the throttle to bring the plane out of its long, slow dive into the ocean, but his hands are shaking almost too badly to manage the controls. This is like every nightmare he’s had since the train combined into one. He’s helpless to prevent what’s happening to him; the old tightness is returning to his chest, and his heart is skipping wildly as he tries to figure out what to do. Finally, he sees something like Howard’s radio transponder and grabs it, pushing the button on the side with trembling fingers.

“Base, come in,” he says. “This is Captain Rogers. Do you read me?”

“Rogers! What’s your loc—” Morita’s voice is responding, but Steve is hardly surprised at all when Howard’s voice cuts in; he’s either pushed Morita out of the way or seized the mic himself. “Steve, is that you?” Howard demands. “Are you all right?”

“I’m okay,” Steve says, even though that couldn’t be further from the truth. “Schmidt’s dead.”

“Good riddance,” Howard says fervently. “What about the plane?”

Steve glances back at the charred hole where the Tesseract burned through the fuselage as it fell. “That’s a little tougher to explain,” he says.

“Give me your coordinates. I’ll find you a safe landing site,” Howard says, and when he doesn’t respond quickly enough, repeats, “Steve! Coordinates!”

“There’s… there’s not gonna be a safe landing,” Steve tells him, hoping his sudden breathlessness isn’t coming across on the radio. “But I can try to put it down in the water.”

“Don’t you dare!” Howard orders, and Steve can almost see him in the mission control room, pacing, holding the microphone by its stand. “I want that plane and you back here in one piece, Rogers.”

Well, that’s definitely not going to happen now. Steve shuts his eyes, considering, then opens them again. There’s no point trying to explain to Howard what happened with the Tesseract when he barely understands it himself. His body has probably lost half the height and muscle mass it put on in the transformation already; even if there was anything anybody could do to help him, there’s no way they could get to him in time. “The plane is headed for New York,” he says, and draws in a sharp breath as pain shoots through him. “Right now I’m in the middle of nowhere, but if I wait longer, a lot of people are gonna die.”

“Rogers—”

“Howard,” Steve says, “this is my choice.”

 _“Rogers,”_ Howard says again, but Steve isn’t listening anymore. He’s taking the compass, with Peggy’s picture glued inside it, and settling it on the dashboard, so that he can see it while he keeps his hands fixed on the controls.

“Steve,” Howard says, and it’s the softest Steve has ever heard his voice. “Peggy wouldn’t want you to do this.”

Steve shakes his head. “You still owe me that ride in your flying car, don’t forget,” he says, but his mind is only half on the words. All he can think about is the fact that he’s already lost maybe the first and definitely the best friend he’s ever had. He got revenge for her, even if Schmidt took him down in the process; he _won._ So why does this feel so much like losing?

 “Fine,” Howard says, sounding angry. Steve knows the guy well enough now, though, to realize that it’s only because he hates it when there’s a thing he can’t fix. “Fine, you get your tail back here and Gabrielle is all yours. Crash her into the goddamn Thames if you want, just come home in one p—”

The radio cuts off abruptly when the plane strikes the glacier, and Steve is tossed out of the pilot’s seat like a rag doll. Somewhere in the cockpit, glass shatters, sending cold air streaming in. With all that muscle, not to mention the serum running his metabolism so much faster than normal and putting out heat all the time, he’d forgotten what it was like to be this cold. His fingers are already stiffening up, and his arms already feel so much shorter than they’re supposed to be that it takes him several tries to reach out and close his hand around the compass that’s fallen to the floor beside him.

Peggy Carter’s face is the last thing he sees before he closes his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I don’t know why this update took so long to finish… *checks word count* _…Oh._ That's why.
> 
> Awesome beta Robyngoodfellow is awesome, as always.
> 
> Peggy’s jujitsu line was in the First Avenger shooting script and it’s a travesty that they cut it.


	12. Barton Farm

Steve, Natasha, and Sam are handcuffed by the S.T.R.I.K.E. team before they’re hustled over to a waiting SUV, but Bucky gets something different: his wrists are shoved through two wide metal cylinders that lock his forearms together, and when the cylinder on the left clamps shut, it shoots a current through his metal arm that disables the electronics inside.

“Did you Hydra bastards build restraints for Captain America before or after you decided to murder Nick Fury?” Sam snaps at Rumlow, who retaliates by accidentally-on-purpose banging Sam’s head into the doorframe when he shoves him into the car. It’s the kind of petty assholery Steve expects out of Hydra, but the flash of anger barely registers through the blanket of shock that dropped down over him the minute he saw Peggy’s face. What does come through, loud and clear, is the little involuntary noise Bucky makes when his arm goes dead. It’s his only reaction; beyond that, he doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, doesn’t even bother to shake his hair out of his face while they shove him into the vehicle, with Natasha and Sam on either side of him, and sandwich Steve opposite him between two armored guards.

Steve closes his eyes for a moment and wishes he had time to allow himself the luxury of self-pity. But a tactical brain is a blessing and a curse, and his is already pointing out that Bucky’s out of commission, Natasha has an untreated bullet wound and blood seeping down her shoulder, and Sam has already resisted enough to make them wary. If he wants any of the four of them to get out of this alive, he’s going to have to handle it himself.

Steve takes a deep breath to speak and then starts coughing instead. He lets out a wheeze and presses his cuffed hands to his chest, and Bucky snaps his head up. “He needs his inhaler,” he tells the nearest guard, his tone sharp and urgent. “It’s in his back pocket. Just take the cap off and put it in his mouth and push down on the top.”

The guard doesn’t so much as twitch, and when Steve coughs harder, Bucky’s breathing quickens too, in sympathy. “Jesus Christ,” he says, “you want Rumlow to find out you let his prisoner die of an asthma attack? For God’s sake, just—could you _please_ act like a human being for one second and—”

Which is when the guard on Steve’s left whips out their stun stick, reaches past Steve, and shocks the shit out of the guard on Steve’s right.

Steve jerks backward, but the danger is past. The smell of charred plastic fills the cabin of the SUV, and the second guard falls on the floor, twitching, while the first one pulls off his—no— _her_ helmet, Steve mentally amends, as a cascade of long, dark hair falls down around her shoulders. “Hang on,” she says, turning to Steve. “I’ll get you that inhaler.”

“No—no, I’m fine.” Steve forces himself to breathe in slowly, while Bucky gives him a wounded look, realizing he’s fallen for the oldest trick in the book. Steve was kind of counting on that, though; he wanted the guards looking at Bucky so he could take a swing at one of them and hope Sam or Nat would jump in. He definitely wasn’t counting on the guard he was about to elbow in the stomach turning into a surprise ally. “I… I don’t think we’ve met,” he says, as soon as he has his breath back.

“No, we haven’t,” says the woman. “Hi. I’m Laura Barton.”

 

“So let me get this straight,” says Sam. They’ve put down in a large, flat field—Steve is guessing Iowa, but it’s been seventy years since he’s seen the Midwest, and even that was mostly through a tour bus window—and Clint is standing with his hands in his pockets, with two black eyes and a strip of tape across his freshly broken nose, somehow managing to look sheepish and pleased with himself at the same time. “You got back together with your old girlfriend and then you got _married_ and you didn’t think to _tell your coworkers_ about it?”

“He told me,” Natasha says. She’s looking a hell of a lot better now that Sam and Steve have stopped the bleeding and patched her up with the Quinjet’s exhaustive medkit. She still shouldn’t be moving around or talking as much as she is, but Sam has already pointed out that Steve, with his broken arm, is literally not in any position to throw stones. “And I told him that if he ever hurts Laura again, I’ll sever his rotator cuff.”

“So how does it work, him living in Brooklyn and you living here?”

“Great, for the most part,” Laura says. “I’ve always liked having my space.”

“We still see each other way more often than soldiers on deployment,” Clint points out. “Or those guys who work on oil rigs, that kind of thing. We do a lot of long weekends.”

“Plus, it gives me a lot of time to work on my book—”

“After Laura had kids, she quit field work and went into linguistics,” Clint adds. “Couple years, she’s gonna publish _the_ book on Asgardian languages.”

“Hang on,” says Sam, “go back to the ‘kids’ part.”

“Previous marriage,” Laura explains. “They love Clint, though. Lila’s started calling him Dad.”

Sam shakes his head. “Man, I don’t even know what to do with this.”

“…Is the name of Clint’s sex tape,” Laura says, which causes Sam to look at her with deep respect.

“Okay,” he says, “now I’m starting to see it.”

Steve glances over at Bucky, hoping to find him grinning, too, but Bucky is still back by the Quinjet, with his shoulders hunched and his hands in his pockets. As soon as he realized Steve wasn’t in any real danger, he lapsed right back into his current uncharacteristic silence. “Hey,” Steve says, taking a step toward him. “You okay?”

Bucky looks at him for a minute as if he doesn’t understand the words; then he shakes himself and says, “Just tired,” and Steve feels a stab of guilt. Truth is, he’s been keeping himself as busy as he can since… since the bridge; he doesn’t want to think about it yet, so he’s been distracting himself with taking care of Natasha… maybe a little too successfully, if he distracted himself from Bucky, too.

“Laura,” he says, “I’m sorry, but Bucky’s dead on his feet. Is there somewhere he can crash for a couple hours?”

Clint is the one who answers: “There’s somebody you guys need to see first.”

 

Okay. Steve is willing to admit that he didn’t see this one coming.

“We watched them cut you open,” Natasha said. “You _died,_ Nick.”

“Well, not exactly,” says another familiar voice, and Steve gets another surprise when he looks up to see Bruce Banner emerging from behind one of the plastic sheets that have been hung up to make a semi-sterile environment. He sees their surprise and gives them all a self-conscious little smile. “Hi.”

“Bruce, we thought you were—”

“In the Arctic? I was,” Bruce says. “It’s awful.”

Steve can’t disagree. “So what does ‘not exactly’ mean?”

“I’d been working on a formula that I thought might help with the other guy,” Bruce says. “Spoiler alert: it doesn’t. But it does slow down the heart rate to about one beat per minute, which is useful if you’re trying to make it look like an assassination attempt succeeded. I’m still not _completely_ convinced the best place to recover from massive physical trauma is a barn—”

“Find me a hospital Hydra can’t infiltrate and we’ll talk,” Fury says wearily.

“Nick, I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re alive,” Steve says, “but we need to start making a plan. A lot of people are gonna die unless we figure out how to stop Project Insight.”

“Did he just say ‘we’?” Sam says, with a glance at Bucky.

“He won’t stay out of it,” Bucky says, flat. “Not when _she’s_ there.”

“Oh, for—Rogers, you are not seriously thinking about launching a rescue mission.”

Steve doesn’t answer. He wishes to God it wasn’t like this, but he doesn’t see how he has any choice.

“Who’s getting rescued?” says Bruce.

Steve glances toward Bucky, but Bucky is already gone, leaving one of the plastic sheets swinging behind him. All the heaviness Steve has been ignoring comes crashing back down on him, and it takes him longer than it should to say, “I’m sorry, I gotta—” and follow.

Bucky has a head start, and he’s internalized enough sniper tricks to know how to disappear, so when Steve finally finds him sitting on the front porch steps, staring at a couple of chickens that are lazily pecking around the yard, he knows it’s because Bucky wants to be found. He raps on a porch rail to announce his presence—it’s not a good idea to startle Bucky when he gets in a state—and Bucky turns and looks at him through hollow eyes. “Stevie,” he says.

“Hey.” Steve sits down beside him. “Wanna talk about it?”

Bucky shakes his head. “You don’t have to explain. I get it.”

“You’re about five steps ahead of me, then.” Steve takes a deep breath. “Buck, I know you were having a hard time even before everything blew up with S.H.I.E.L.D. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to tell you to cheer up because I know that’s not how it works, and I didn’t want to tell you to get your meds adjusted because I didn’t want you to think you’re not allowed to be sad, and part of me was afraid that saying anything about it would make you feel like you were letting me down by being depressed. And I know it would make it easier on you if I could open up more. I’m sorry I’m not better at that. But—I know this makes me the world’s biggest hypocrite, but don’t do the thing where you think you have to carry it yourself, okay? You’re my best friend. I need you to let me in.”

Bucky is quiet for a long moment. Then he slides off the vibranium ring he wears on his right hand and holds it out to Steve in his metal fingers. “You can have it back if you want,” he says.

Steve stares at him. “What?”

“It’s okay,” Bucky says. “I know you love her, and I… I wish I could be okay with sharing you, or doing some kind of polyamory thing—”

_“What?”_

“—but honestly, I don’t think that’s how either of us is wired. So I’m letting you off the hook,” Bucky says. “It’s gonna kill me, but I know you’re thinking you’ve gotta do the noble thing and stay with me because you promised, and knowing you were doing that would kill me worse, so I’m calling it.”

Steve is speechless for several seconds. Then he says, “Bucky Barnes, you are the biggest, dumbest, most annoying fucking _jerk.”_

Bucky blinks. He was obviously bracing himself for something, but not anger. “Steve—”

“Listen, I know you think I have some image of Peggy in my head that you can never live up to, and maybe I’ve given you good reason to think so, but after everything we’ve been through, if you think I’d run off with her and leave you, then you really are an idiot.”

“Right,” Bucky says. “Peggy Carter, your first love and the woman you were gonna marry after the war, turns up alive seventy years after you’re both supposed to be dead, and out of everybody in the world, she just happens to run into you, and you don’t think it’s God or fate or something telling you to get back together.”

“First off,” Steve says, “she didn’t _happen_ to run into me. She was sent after me—after _us._ Hydra is trying to break us both down, and frankly, you need to stop doing their job for them. Second, yeah, I do intend to go get Peggy back from Hydra, and yeah, I do still love her, Buck. However much of her is left in there, anyway. I’m sorry; I know that’s hard to hear. But I’m _in_ love with you. You’re the love of my life, and you’re the one I want to be with. I’m gonna keep choosing you over everybody else until the day I die. Fate doesn’t get to make that call; I do. Now put your ring back on before one of those chickens comes over here and eats it.”

That wrings the first genuine smile out of Bucky that Steve has seen in days. “I like you better when you’re mad than when you’re worried,” he says.

“Well, you’re an infuriating jerk, so I guess that works out.” Steve reaches out and lays a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “Do you at least feel better about the Zola thing now, anyway?”

Bucky looks up at him, confused. “What does that have to do with it?”

“When he said you would’ve worked for Hydra, he didn’t mean w _illingly_. He was probably saying that whatever he did to… Peggy,” Steve says, carefully not allowing his voice to shake, “he would’ve done that to you.”

“What do you think he _did_ do to her?” Bucky asks.

“I don’t know,” Steve says grimly. “But I’m gonna find out.”

 

Fury is the first step, but when he says he doesn’t know anything about it, Steve is inclined to believe him. Of course, that’s part of the problem. In Steve’s experience, good liars go one of two ways: they either get hooked on the rush of being believed until they’re lying continuously and outrageously, sometimes even to themselves, or they learn to strip the lies down to the bare minimum: _I wasn’t there, it wasn’t me, I didn’t know your friend was still alive._ The first type eventually give themselves away, but the second type—Fury, Natasha—can lie in a way that’s more convincing than honesty. It’s disconcerting to know he can call people his friends without trusting them.

Natasha, on the other hand, is surprisingly forthcoming, although she doesn’t know anything he couldn’t have guessed. “I told you there were stories,” she says, once the rest of them are gathered in Laura’s kitchen. “Most of them I didn’t believe. A Russian super-soldier—or a captured Western one who’d been tortured and brainwashed. The rumors were all over the place, but the only consistent ones were that she had incredible strength and that something was done to her that slowed her aging. The phrase I heard was that they ‘kept her on ice’ between missions.”

Steve has rarely been so grateful for all the terrible science fiction movies Bucky has made him sit through in the name of catching up on popular culture. “You think they cryogenically froze her?”

“We know it worked once,” she says, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Steve only survived the freezing because of the serum,” Bruce says dismissively. “We’re still not at the stage where it works for just anybo—” He looks at Steve’s face, and says, “Really?”

“Really,” Steve confirms. “But she wasn’t this strong before. She was tough, but nothing like we saw today. They must have done something else to her.”

“Bone conditioning,” Bucky says. It’s the first time he’s spoken up, and everybody turns to look at him; he’s huddled at the far side of the kitchen, clutching a coffee cup in both hands like it’s his shield, and he looks and sounds like hell, but every time Steve tells him to go get some rest, he just settles himself more firmly in his corner. “The thing you did so you could catch the shield without breaking your hands. Microfracturing the bones so they heal stronger. If I was Hydra and I found out about that, I would’ve broken every bone in her body to make her a better weapon.”

“If you were Hydra, we’d all be fucked,” says Clint. “You’ve got one scary brain, bro.”

“Clint,” Laura says, and Steve looks away, pretending he doesn’t see Bucky wince.

“Whatever they did to her,” Steve says, “we can’t help her until we take down Hydra, and to do that, we have to stop the helicarrier launch.”

“Maria Hill gave me these,” Laura says. She takes a case from the floor and sets it on the table, opening it to reveal what look like three computer motherboards. “We’ll need to get someone onto each of the helicarriers to swap out the targeting chips. Just one or two won’t do it—it has to be all three—and we can’t get into the S.H.I.E.L.D. carrier bays; security’s too good. We’ll have to time it to hit them after the launch but before they reach firing altitude. It’ll be a tight window.”

“So three of us,” Sam says. “Barnes, Nat, and me?”

“No,” says Laura. “We need Natasha on another job, unless anyone else here can hack S.H.I.E.L.D.’s network. And Clint’s out; he was already supposed to be on injured reserve before the concussion.”

“I can still work,” Clint protests.

“Maybe,” Natasha says sweetly. “It depends on how hard I hit you.”

“So I’m the third?” says Bruce. “Because, I don’t know, tiny computer chip, Other Guy… Seems kind of like a recipe for disaster.”

“It would be,” Steve says. “And anyway, I want to keep you in reserve, Bruce. I’m sorry to ask, but if we fail, we need you to be the backup plan, because you might be the only one of us Hydra can’t kill.”

Everybody gets quiet for a minute while that sinks in, and then Bucky says, “You’re gonna tell us you get helicarrier number three, then, huh?”

“Well, I am small and easy to overlook,” Steve says. It’s supposed to sound light, but it falls flat, and he says, more defensively than he means to, “I’ve trained for this. I can do this.”

“So Clint can’t go because he’s hurt, but you’re not letting fucking broken _bones_ stop you from going up against the biggest, evilest organization in the world? God, Steve, you’re the absolute worst…” is as far as Bucky’s anger takes him before he runs out of steam. “I’m not gonna talk you out of it, am I?”

“I’m sorry, Buck.”

Bucky presses his metal hand to his temple and sighs. “Well, at least you’ll be where I can keep an eye on your dumb ass,” he says, and Steve wishes that felt a little more like he was winning and less like Bucky was giving up.

They have the broad strokes of a plan now, but there are still a million details to work out, and Steve knows he won’t be satisfied until he’s double-checked each of them. If he’s honest with himself, this is why he prefers to do things on the fly: once he starts second-guessing himself, he never stops. So he spends a long time at the kitchen table, mapping the details on the printed helicarrier blueprints Laura snagged from somewhere—after more than a year of 3D models, it’s strange to go back to paper copies, but he agrees with Natasha’s assessment that both Jarvis and the S.H.I.E.L.D. databases are too risky at the moment. He barely hears Clint telling him that he and Laura need to put the kids to bed, and he doesn’t even notice when the others straggle off—not until Sam taps him on the shoulder and he looks up to find that they’re alone in the kitchen.

“How are you doing?” Sam asks, and Steve gives him a joyless smile.

“Not great,” he admits, “if you want the truth.”

“Yeah, I saw you doing the thing earlier,” Sam says.

“What thing?”

“That thing where I can actually, physically see you bottling up your feelings and putting the bottles in a box and labeling the box, ‘Open this never.’”

“I don’t do that.”

“Yeah, you do.”

“Yeah,” Steve admits, “I guess I do.”

“You know Carter’s gonna be there tomorrow.”

Steve takes a deep breath and nods. Leave it to Sam to call him out on what they both know: that he’s distracting himself so he won’t have to think too hard what’s been done to Peggy, and what might be _being_ done to her right now. He really, really doesn’t want to think about the fact that Hydra only speaks one language when it comes to failure. “I know.”

“Look, Steve,” Sam says, and it’s the gentleness of it that gets him. Sam, who’s never been afraid to call anybody and everybody out on their bullshit, is being _careful_ about this. “Whoever she used to be—the person she is now, I don’t think she’s the kind you save. I think she’s the kind you stop.”

Steve gives him a thin smile. “I don’t know if I could do that, Sam.”

“Well, she might not give you a choice,” Sam says. “She doesn’t know you.”

“She will,” Steve says, standing up. He’s been at the table so long that his joints pop, and Sam gives him a skeptical look. “Shut up,” he says. “I’ll stretch before I get on the helicarrier.”

Sam shakes his head and mutters as he walks away, and Steve goes upstairs to the guest room Laura pointed out earlier. He’s expecting Bucky to be either asleep or pretending to sleep, but he’s not; he’s sitting on the window seat, looking out. “Can you actually see anything outside?” he asks.

“Yup,” Bucky says. “Moon’s super bright out here. There’s like a million stars and a bunch of cornfields that go on forever. You know what I can’t see?”

“What?”

“One decent takeout restaurant. You know Laura says the nearest _grocery_ store is like thirty minutes away? Hey, do you hear that?”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Exactly. It’s so quiet it’s loud. I mean, it’s one thing if you’re on deployment, but I thought the whole point of human civilization is so we can order pizza at three A.M. If I tried to live in a place like this, I’d be dead in a week.”

“Weren’t you born in Indiana?”

“Yeah, but that’s not _my_ fault.” There’s a small pause, and Bucky adds, “You’re really sure about this thing tomorrow, huh?”

“Is that really what’s on your mind?”

It’s a shot in the dark, but Steve thinks he can hear the question Bucky isn’t asking, around the edges of the one he is. He’s forgotten that even as well as they know each other, Bucky can still surprise him. “Do you…” he begins, takes a deep breath, and blurts, “Wouldn’t it be better if I just went and killed Pierce?”

“Bucky!” Steve stares at him. “You can’t do that. You’re…” Shocked, he blurts out the first thing that comes to mind: “You’re Captain America.”

“No, _you’re_ Captain America, Steve. I’m just a guy in a star-spangled uniform. Look, I know you really want to believe Zola was wrong about me, but… You’re the guy who does what’s right. I’m the guy who does what’s _necessary._ Let’s not kid ourselves. If Hydra threatened you to get to me, we both know I’d flip in a minute.”

“Bucky,” Steve says.

“But that’s why I can kill Pierce. I mean, it was bad enough when I found out he was messing with me through the whole Winter Soldier project, but now that I know he’s a literal fucking Nazi, I won’t even have to feel bad about it. If I take the Quinjet and go now, I can set it up so they find his body in the morning. Then they’d have to postpone Project Insight, and we’d have time to blow this whole Hydra thing wide open some other way. That way, nobody has to go on the helicarrier. Nobody has to risk anything. It’s the best strategy here, and you know it.”

“You,” Steve says, after a moment of stunned silence, “are still trying to protect me. You want to take this whole thing on your own conscience, just so I don’t have to go on the helicarriers tomorrow.”

“Who cares? I’d still save a lot of other people from getting hurt. Let me do it, Stevie. It’ll work.”

As gently as he can, Steve says, “No, Buck, it won’t.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Two reasons. First, do I have to remind you what Hydra’s motto is? If Pierce dies, we don’t know who’ll step up in his place, but it won’t delay Project Insight. They’ll probably say his murder just proves it’s more important to go forward. All we’d accomplish would be losing our element of surprise. We don’t accomplish anything if we keep fighting Hydra one head at a time. If we want to beat them, it all has to go at once—S.H.I.E.L.D., Hydra, the whole lot of it. And second, if we overplay our hand now, we also lose any chance of saving Peggy.”

Bucky swallows hard. “If it was anybody else but her,” he says, “you wouldn’t be acting like this.”

“Maybe not,” Steve admits. “But if it was you, I’d tear the world apart to get you back, and you know it.”

Bucky meets his eyes, just for a minute, and then he looks down and rubs his eyes with his right hand. “So I can’t kill Pierce? Not even a little?”

“Bucky, I know it’s a terrible thing to ask you to try to understand this, but I’m trying really hard not to do the thing Sam accused me of just now—”

“You mean the thing where you make your feelings go the way of Jimmy Hoffa?”

“I don’t know what that means, but, yeah, you probably have the gist of it. The point is… I _have_ to go after Peggy, Buck. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t. And I wouldn’t deserve you if I didn’t.”

“You already don’t deserve me,” Bucky mutters. It’s halfhearted, but at least he’s trying to sound like himself again. “C’mere,” he says, and leads Steve to the bed, then lays him down and climbs up to kneel over him, pulling his shirt over his head in the process. “Whoa, _whoa,”_ Steve says, when Bucky reaches for the zipper on his jeans. “What are you doing?”

“Please tell me that’s not a serious question.”

“We’re in somebody else’s house,” Steve protests. “It’s weird.”

“Only if you’re a fuckin’ prude. C’mon, let me take your mind off things for a minute.”

“Bucky—” Steve presses his right hand against Bucky’s bare chest. “You don’t owe me something because I said I’d stay with you.”

“I know.” Bucky leans down, close enough that his hair trails over Steve’s stomach, and Steve feels his hot breath on his skin. “I just… I need to feel like there’s one thing they can’t take from me right now. Is that okay?”

Steve knows himself better than people give him credit for. He knows he’s hot-tempered and stubborn and uptight and generally hard to live with, that he’s good at leading people but bad at connecting with them, that sometimes he gets helpless in the face of problems he can’t punch. He knows Bucky wishes he could open up more, let himself be _happier._ But he also knows, even if he has a hard time saying it, that Bucky Barnes is the best thing that’s ever happened to him, and it’s true what he said—he really would tear the world apart if it would keep Bucky safe. He reaches out with his right hand and tilts Bucky’s chin up so he can look him in the eyes. “Hey,” he says. “No more messing around. As soon as this is all over, you and I are getting married.”

Bucky looks up, startled, for a moment, and then he grins. “I love you too, punk,” he says, bending his head down again, and Steve closes his eyes and tries to put aside everything else and accept the gift he’s being given, the way Bucky obviously wants him to.

He just wishes he could shake the feeling that what Bucky’s really saying is _goodbye._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this got longer and angstier than I meant it to and YES I’M A HORRIBLE PERSON, I know, I’m sorry. Just keep in mind that we're still only _maybe_ 2/3 or less of the way through the story I want to tell, okay? :)
> 
> Also, I know the fandom hates Laura, but I like her. And of course she’s absolutely no less valid if she’s “just” a stay-at-home mom, but this is my fic and she can kick ass if I want her to. :) I like to think she met Clint during the first Thor movie, when Coulson called in “someone from Linguistics” about the same time he would’ve been calling Clint in for Mjolnir-sitting duty.


	13. The Triskelion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, writing every chapter before this chapter: I can't wait to write the helicarrier fight scene! It's gonna be so much fun.  
> Me, writing this chapter: *incoherent screaming*

It’s just as well they leave the farm at fuck o’clock in the morning, because Bucky is already wide awake. When he woke up after barely two hours in bed next to Steve, he knew he wasn’t going to be able to shut his brain off again, but the rest of them don’t have the super-serum and need to be rested to face the day ahead; one way or another, it’s the day that’s going to change everything. It’s a relief to him when they’re finally on the Quinjet, and he can start going through his usual pre-mission protocol of suiting up—he doesn’t know how Hill got his spare uniform and smuggled it to Laura, but he’s not looking a gift horse in the mouth—and then checking and re-checking the comms and the gear and the plans. He’s halfway through his mental checklist when he stops dead, and Sam looks up to say, “B., you okay, man?”

Bucky is emphatically not okay, but he takes a deep breath and nods. “I just, uh,” he says, “this is the part where I usually text Becca.”

“You can’t,” Sam says. “Even if we had a burner phone, they might be watching her in case you make contact.”

“Yeah, thanks for that, Agent Obvious,” Bucky says. It’s the same reason they couldn’t call Tony and tell him to haul ass back from Shanghai or Beijing or wherever the fuck he’s at right now: because Hydra is probably watching everyone they might reach out to, period. But the point isn’t the contact, as important as it is; the point is the routine. Bucky never figured he was superstitious—shit, at this point he pretty much accepts that his luck’s gonna be rotten no matter what he does or doesn’t do—but it feels like a bad omen, coming right before a mission where the fate of the world is already hanging by a thread. A mission that one Steven Grant Rogers is complicating even further, as it happens.

As if he senses the thought, Steve reaches out and puts a hand on his shoulder. Bucky resists the sudden temptation to lean over and melt into Steve’s arms; instead, he just forces a smile and nods a little in acknowledgment, keeping his eyes front. He doesn’t want to give anything away.

Part of him wishes he could be mad at Steve for forcing his hand. But half the reason he loves Steve so much is that Steve wants to do the right thing even when it seems impossible. It might be easier if he could change that, but it wouldn’t be better.

Using stolen clearance codes, they land the Quinjet at Dulles, where they drop Natasha off and meet up with Maria Hill. “Fly casual,” Natasha tells Sam when they kiss goodbye, and Sam says, “Nerd,” and Bucky feels a pang, watching: will it ever be that easy between him and Steve again? Then he glances over at Steve, who’s ignoring them all and scribbling in that notebook of his, and tells himself it won’t matter unless they _both_ survive today; and he steels himself all over again to do what has to be done.

“Stevie, I want you to take this,” he says, holding out one of his pistols in its holster.

Steve looks at it, looks at him, frowns. “I don’t—”

“This is no time to fuck around, Steve. _Take_ it,” Bucky repeats, and whatever Steve sees in his eyes, he doesn’t argue, just attaches the holster to his belt.

They make their way onto the Triskelion grounds without incident, thanks to a few sneaky back doors that Hill leads them through, and then to the control room that Hill has identified as the ideal Mission Control for this op: easily taken, since the air traffic controllers aren’t armed, and easily defensible once they lock it down. After they clear the hapless controllers out of the room, Hill briskly hacks into the system and syncs their comms into it. When Bucky takes the opportunity to do a perimeter check, opening all the doors and scanning each room —restroom, supply closet, etc.—nobody even pays attention to him until Hill says, “Barnes, you ready to get this party started?”

“Yeah.” Bucky sits down in front of the microphone and is reaching for the green broadcast button when Steve slides something in front of him: a page ripped out of his notebook, covered in his neat, precise writing. Bucky skims it and nods. It’s better than what he was going to say, by a long shot. He takes a deep breath and presses the button.

“Attention, all S.H.I.E.L.D. agents,” he says. “My name is James Buchanan Barnes. You probably know me as Captain America.” And there it is, his secret identity out to the world; not as if it wouldn’t have been anyway, as soon as Natasha does her thing over at the Triskelion, but this still feels like the point where it becomes irrevocable. “You’ve heard a lot about me over the last few days. Some of you were even ordered to hunt me down. But I think it’s time you know the truth. S.H.I.E.L.D. is not what we thought it was. It’s been taken over by Hydra. Alexander Pierce is their leader. The S.T.R.I.K.E. and Insight crews are Hydra as well. We don’t know who else is compromised. They could be standing right next to you. They almost have what they want: absolute control. If you launch the helicarriers today, Hydra will be able to kill anyone that stands in their way, unless we stop them. I know I’m asking a lot. The price of freedom is high—it always has been—but it’s a price the Avengers and I are willing to pay. And if we’re the only ones, then so be it. But I’m willing to bet we’re not.”

He takes his hand off the button, breathing a sigh of relief—public speaking is a hundred times worse than punching stuff—while Sam glances over his shoulder at the notepaper, then looks at Steve. “So you do write your little speeches down first,” he says. “I thought so.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, standing up. “Just one more thing before we roll.” He opens the door to the supply closet and says, “Steve, gimme a hand with this, would ya?”

That’s the thing about Steve, Bucky thinks. He’s such a goddamn nice person that it doesn’t even occur to him to say, _ask the guy without the broken arm for help, why don’t you;_ he just moves immediately to assist, which is when Bucky shoves him into the closet, pushes the door shut, and bends the handle with his metal hand before Steve can regain his balance. He hears a thump and some rattling as Steve catches himself against the metal shelving. In a low, dangerous voice, he says, “Bucky, what the _hell.”_

“I’m sorry, Steve,” Bucky tells him, through the door, “but you didn’t seriously think I was gonna let you take point on this op with a broken arm, did you?”

“Goddamn it, Bucky,” Steve yells, and there’s a crashing sound. Bucky shakes his head. The whole point of this was that Steve wasn’t supposed to get hurt, but bruises are better than bullet holes. “Sam, you know this isn’t right, let me out of here!”

“Sorry, buddy,” Sam says, “but I’m with Barnes on this one.”

“Not to mention you couldn’t open that door if you tried,” Hill adds, without looking up from her station. “Barnes, has it occurred to you that we’ll need to find a bolt cutter to let him out once we’re done here?”

“There’s at least two ways out of that closet that don’t involve the door,” Bucky says. “I’m sure Mr. Tactical Thinking there can figure it out.” He flicks on his comm, tucks two of the computer chips into the breast pocket of his uniform, and hands the other to Sam. “Ready, Falcon?”

“I sure hope you know what you’re doing, Cap,” Sam says, but he follows Bucky anyway.

 

It was always a long shot that they’d be able to stop the launch of any of the three helicarriers just by giving a heartfelt speech, but it’s bought them some time, though not as much as Bucky would have liked. When they get to the landing pad, the bay doors are already open—even having seen them from below, he didn’t realize how _huge_ they are—and the helicarriers are starting to rise slowly out of the Potomac. “I got the one on the left,” he yells at Sam, who nods and peels off sharply toward the one on the right. Bucky ends up having to do a pretty stupid running leap to make it onto the deck of the carrier, and then he has to plow through a bunch of Hydra-sympathizing crew, which basically involves a lot of the kind of idiot heroics that will make Steve proud, if he ever speaks to Bucky again. That’s a problem for later, though, and Bucky focuses hard on staying in the zone and dealing with what’s in front of him—so hard, in fact, that he can hardly believe it when he reaches the control panel and slots the first computer chip into its dock. “Alpha lock,” he announces, crushing the old chip in his metal hand. “Rendezvous on the carrier deck, Falcon.”

“Beta lock,” Sam echoes. “Be right there, Cap. I’ll—” And that’s when a series of small explosions rock the deck of the helicarrier.

 _Shit._ Someone’s firing an anti-aircraft gun from the deck. Bucky runs back to take them out, but he almost doesn’t need to; a quick glance over his shoulder tells him that he’s never seen anything like the aerial acrobatics Sam is doing today. He hopes Sam is gonna get a _pile_ of medals for this. Bucky spots the guy who’s doing the shooting and whips the shield at him, knocking him sideways, but the shield spins off at an angle, and Sam snatches it out of the air and bashes the gunner in the face with it. “Hey,” Bucky says, “not bad,” and then Sam grabs him under the arms and swoops him up in the air.

Bucky swallows a yelp as his feet leave the deck, and he doesn’t think he breathes again until he lands on the last helicarrier. He’s not great with heights. “Jesus, you’re heavy,” Sam grumbles, and Bucky forces a smile, grateful for the distraction—a smile that instantly disappears when he sees a wave of Hydra fighters lining up across the deck. He flings the shield and rushes in behind it, shouting, “Get out of here, Sam!”

“Don’t have to ask me twice,” Sam says—and then, while his comm line is still open, there’s a weird sort of twanging, ripping sound, and a scream. “Sam!” Bucky cries, and the next couple of seconds are among the worst of this whole adventure, until Sam comes back with, “I’m fine, but the suit’s down. Sorry, B.”

“It’s okay, you get someplace safe. I got this.” Bucky punches the last of his own opponents in the face, looks around, and finds a staircase leading down, into the belly of the helicarrier.

 

It only takes one hit for Steve to know the door isn’t going to yield, but Steve spends the next couple minutes kicking it, just because he _wants_ to, before he starts yelling again. “Maria, come on, let me out of here!”

“I’m a little busy running an op right now, Rogers,” Hill calls back. “Although, if you think about it, it’s pretty funny that your fiancé just put you in the closet.”

“Yeah, it’s fucking hilarious,” Steve snaps, throwing one more kick at the door before he gives up, panting. Okay, that’s not going to work, and he needs to save his energy for something that might. Bucky said there were two other ways out of the room, and Steve, looking around, spots one of them immediately: a ventilation grate set high up in the wall. It takes him a few tries to work out how to climb the shelving unit one-handed, and once he’s up there, he realizes that even if he can brace his feet enough that he won’t fall while he works, he’s got no way to remove the grate, so he’ll have to climb back down and look for something to pry it off with—

—And that’s when he realizes he’s being an idiot, because he’s not just in a maintenance closet; he’s in a S.H.I.E.L.D. maintenance closet.

Laura called it a _mouse hole,_ the little laser-cutter thing she used to cut her way out of the armored car. The one that’s stuck on the shelf in the maintenance closet must be an old version, and it’s almost out of juice, but he only has to slice through a layer of sheetrock to make an escape hatch. He tosses the drained cutter on the floor and says, “I don’t want to fight you, Maria, but if you try to stop me—”

“I don’t have time to take sides in your domestic dispute, Rogers,” Hill tells him, still tapping her keyboard. “Romanoff’s information is just hitting the Web, and Hydra’s already got black hats on the case, trying to tear it down again. An epic DDOS shitstorm’s about to go down, and I’m going to have plenty to do keeping the firewall up without worrying about you, too.”

Steve understood about four words of that, but what he gets out of it is that Hill isn’t going to stop him. “Good,” he says, and heads out to find himself a pilot.

 

Bucky has no idea how Carter beats him to bank of control panels. Found a more direct route, probably, or didn’t have to stop and fight her way through a squad of S.T.R.I.K.E. goons in the hallway, like he did—but in the end, it doesn’t matter. The immutable fact is that he’s standing at one end of a catwalk and she’s at the other, blocking his way to the computer.

“Agent Carter,” he says, with a nod. “I’m gonna have to ask you to let me pass.”

She doesn’t say anything. He wasn’t really expecting her to. “Okay, look, I wish I had the energy to do the wisecracking superhero thing right now,” he says. “But I just can’t. So, listen, here’s the deal. Your name is Peggy Carter. You were born in 1921. You had a brother named Michael who died in the Second World War. You were an SSR agent, and then you were a Howling Commando, and you were in love with a guy named Steve Rogers, also known as Captain America. Is any of this ringing a bell?”

She stares at him, unmoving. Her eyes are empty.

“Eight minutes, Cap,” Maria Hill says in his earbud.

 “Okay,” Bucky says. “Okay, then. I get it. People have been messing with your head, and you probably have no idea what you can trust. I have a brain that’s like that too, except for different reasons—I’ve got PTSD and depression and all kinds of shit that means I can’t trust my brain not to lie to itself. And I’ve done stuff that… I didn’t know it at the time, but I was working for bad people and they had me doing bad things and telling me it was for the greater good. So I know what it’s like, and that would make me want to help you even if you didn’t matter a lot to the man I love more than anybody else in the world. But mostly, I’m doing this because I trust him, and he thinks this is right. So if you come with me, if you meet him, then even if you don’t remember him from before, I think you’re gonna see that he’s one person in this fucking mess who can actually help you. You can leave any time you want, and he won’t make you do anything. He just wants to talk, is all. You wanna give it a shot?”

He holds out his right hand—empty, no weapons—and waits, but she doesn’t move to take it, and she also doesn’t move out of his way.

“Seven minutes,” Hill says. “What are you doing, Barnes?”

“I’m doing what I always do,” Bucky says softly. “I’m doing what’s necessary.”

Then he takes a deep breath and springs.

 

Somebody—okay, Steve can make a pretty good guess about who—has cut a swath of destruction through the Triskelion’s landing pad before he gets there, but in spite of the chaos, there are a couple of planes that look like they’ll still make liftoff. Steve knows plenty about jumping out of planes, but his experience with flying them is, well, limited. He has a vague idea about pulling Bucky’s gun and taking a pilot hostage, but it turns out he doesn’t have to. He’s just stepping out from behind the hangar when Maria Hill’s voice speaks up in his earbud: “Rogers, head over to the helicopter on your two o’clock. I got you a ride.”

“What?” Steve says. “How?”

“Friend of mine. You’ll get along great, you’re both stubborn assholes,” she says, before she cuts off to go back to whatever is happening with the computers.

He’s moving toward the helicopter when he sees somebody in a flight suit walking toward him, somebody who pulls their helmet off and turns out to be a woman with short blonde hair. “Rogers?” she says, and when he nods, she says, “Follow me.”

“That doesn’t look like a S.H.I.E.L.D. flight suit,” he observes, while he climbs into the helicopter beside her. Maybe that’s how Hill knew she could trust this woman; he has no idea how far Hydra’s reach extends, but he has a feeling Pierce kept the recruiting pool under pretty tight control.

“Hell no,” she shouts, over the noise of the rotors spinning up. “I’m the best pilot in the Air Force, kid.”

“Don’t call me a kid,” Steve shouts back. “I was in the Army before you were born.”

“Really? You don’t look like a grunt.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot.”

“See, if you were really in the Army, you’d be trying to trash talk me right now.”

“If I wanted to insult you,” Steve shoots back, “I’d just call you ‘Air Force.’”

The pilot laughs. “There it is,” she says, and then she’s busy dodging a Hydra fighter with a machine gun who’s still trying to knock anything that flies out of the air. She’s not kidding about her skills; there are some close calls, but the way she guides the chopper out of harm’s way would make Sam proud. Steve grits his teeth and lets her concentrate until she’s put the helicopter down on the deck. “There you go,” she says, “end of the line.”

The words send a chill through Steve, but she can’t possibly know that’s what Bucky says to him all the time, and this is no time to get jittery about a glib turn of phrase. “Thanks for the flight,” he says lightly, reaching for the door handle. “I mean, if you call that flying.”

She grins. “Oh, is that how it is?”

“That’s how it is, Airman—” He glances at the patch on her uniform. “Danvers. Listen, you need to get clear of this boat. Things are gonna go south pretty fast up here, and you don’t want to be in the area when they do.”

“No, you listen, grunt,” says Danvers. “I take orders from Maria Hill _if_ she’s lucky. I definitely don’t take them from you. And I’m not an airman,” she calls after him, as he swings his feet out and jumps down to the deck. “I’m a captain.”

“Not impressed,” Steve says, “I’ve seen the kind of people they make into captains,” and then, because he’s never been one to waste a good parting shot, he jumps down from the helicopter and takes off toward the stairwell.

The seriousness of the situation comes rushing back to him as soon as he’s below decks, when he has to step over half a dozen S.T.R.I.K.E. goons in various states of incapacitation in the first stairwell. At least one of them is dying and two more are very dead, one with a close-range bullet hole between his eyes and another with one of Bucky’s KA-BARs in his throat. Steve flinches when he sees that. Contrary to popular opinion, he’s not such an idealist that a couple of dead Nazis bother him, but this was an ugly fight in close quarters, nasty and brutal and decisive. It’s hard to square his Bucky, who loves dogs and coffee and cheesy science fiction, with the person who did this. And it’s his Bucky who’ll have to pick up the pieces when all this is over.

“Rogers, do you have eyes on Barnes?” Maria Hill snaps in his ear.

“Negative,” Steve says. “I’m on Deck C, heading for the control room. What’s wrong?”

“No idea. He’s not answering.”

Shit. Shit, shit, _shit._ If Bucky’s hurt, or—no, there’s not going to be any _or worse._ He crosses the lowest deck of the helicarrier at a flat-out run, bursts into the control room, and sees Bucky, grimacing, with the computer chip in one hand and his metal arm locked around a steel strut, trying to climb a flimsy railing leading back up to the console where the chip has to be inserted.

He doesn’t see Peggy until after he hears the gunshot.

 

Bucky is barely ten seconds into the fight when he knows he’s fucked.

It’s not that Carter is stronger than he is, or even faster. It’s that she has no sense of fucking self-preservation at all. He sees it when he throws the shield and she rips it out of the air without flinching, even though that catch must have snapped a couple of her fingers at the joints, and he sees it again when he rushes in behind it and hurls himself at her, counting on brute force to knock it and her out of his way, and she whips the shield back at him and draws a pistol almost in the same motion, without flinching away from the hit that’s coming. He barely gets his metal hand up in time to block the gun with his palm, and she pulls the trigger anyway, twice, cold-eyed, before he closes his fingers around the barrel and crushes it.

It shouldn’t shake him, but it does, and Carter’s backup weapon flashes toward him almost before he can recover. She’s wielding a wicked-looking knife, carbon steel with a serrated edge, and look, normally there’s nobody on God’s green earth who can go toe-to-toe with Bucky Barnes in a knife fight, but she doesn’t move the way people are supposed to move in close combat. She doesn’t bother to duck his punches, not even when he catches her a good one with the metal arm and slams her body against the bulkhead, because she doesn’t care. It’s like they’ve burned the pain receptors out of her—or, no, she feels the hits, he can see each one register on her face, but they aren’t _relevant_ to her. He’s found a sweet spot before, in certain kinds of combat, where the adrenaline is running high enough that the whole world narrows down to a pinpoint of action and pain doesn’t matter, but if that’s where she is, it’s not because of anything as mundane as anger or fear. It’s like a blast door has slammed shut behind her eyes, locking down everything that isn’t bloody-minded resoluteness.

Bucky has a flash of memory, something one of his dad’s old Army buddies said to him about Vietnam: _we only lost that fight because we had to play by more rules than the enemy._ And that’s where Bucky is now, because she only has one priority, to stop him from getting to that console at any cost, while he’s playing to replace that damn computer chip _and_ keep Carter alive _and_ make it out of here in something reasonably close to one piece. If he wants to win, he’s going to have to let go of at least one of those rules.

Goddammit.

Bucky swings hard with the shield, but at the last second, he feints, going for one of those sneaky gymnastic moves Natasha likes. Okay, so it’s more like a clunky imitation of Natasha’s fluid acrobatics, but it works, and suddenly he’s past her and there’s nothing between him and the console. He punches the release button, grabs the Hydra-will-kill-us-all chip, and squeezes it until it cracks before flinging it away into the stratosphere, but he doesn’t have time to snap in the new one before Carter regroups and hurls herself at him. She hits him high, in a no-holds-barred crash that knocks him clean off his feet and throws him through the air in a sickening lurch, sending both him and the shield sliding over the edge of the platform.

Lucky for him, Bucky hits some kind of metal ramp under the console and slides, which means he doesn’t plummet immediately to his death. Unluckily for him, Carter hits it too, and she recovers just a fraction of a second before he does and realizes what he didn’t—that the Hydra- _won’t-_ kill-us-all chip has slipped out of his hand and is lying on the metal surface. She kicks it over the edge and comes up with another pistol— _another_ one? Jeez, he thought he was gun-happy—and bullets ping off his metal arm, but every shot is getting closer to his face, and that’s not the way he wants to go out, thanks. Something has to give here, and soon.

The hell did the chip go? He scans, spots it, and braces himself: he’s gonna have to jump, and besides the fact that he doesn’t love freefall anyway, the helicarrier has a _glass floor,_ and whose fucking brilliant idea was that? He doesn’t let himself think; he just does it, tucking and rolling so he doesn’t completely destroy his knees on the landing. A clang of metal tells him that she’s right behind him. Both of them dive forward at the same time, and she’s just a hair faster than he is; she grabs the chip, but he grabs her, and hey, has he mentioned that having a metal arm makes him _really_ good at headlocks? “Drop it,” he snarls, and she lashes out like a trapped animal, but he’s got her pinned and no amount of kicking and thrashing is going to get her free.

“Three minutes, Barnes,” Hill says in his ear, and Bucky realizes for the first time that he’s been ignoring her hails. Well, it’s not like his sitrep would be reassuring right now, anyway. He doesn’t want to do this, but he’s running right up against the line between knowing he’ll have to live with his choices later and wanting to _actually_ live. He brings his right hand up around her throat and squeezes.

Honestly, it’s terrifying. Even with his real hand, which can feel her pulse hammering under his fingers, it’s hard to find the right pressure; just a hair too much and he could kill her… and what’s worse is that a tiny, dark little part of him keeps whispering that maybe he ought to. It would be clean, untraceable, _easy,_ and then Steve could finally finish mourning for Peggy like he never got to do in 1944, and then Bucky would have him completely, forever. No more insecurity about being Steve’s consolation prize, no more nagging little voice in the back of his head asking if part of Steve doesn’t still want the family and stability he would’ve earned by marrying his best girl after the War. Bucky can already hear himself earnestly trying to explain that he _had_ to do it: _I’m sorry, Stevie, but I had no choice,_ he’ll say, and eventually he might even believe it himself.

But he doesn’t do it. He goes right up to the edge of the darkness, but he doesn’t fall in, and finally Carter runs out of air and collapses partway on top of him, limp but breathing. Her body feels too heavy, even accounting for the fact that she’s probably all lean muscle and enhanced bone wrapped up in Kevlar. It makes Bucky wonder if they replaced any less visible parts of her, enhanced them, the way they had to add the plate to his shoulder so it could support his metal arm. Either way, he has to push her off him. It crosses his mind that a guy like Rumlow would probably find this either funny or sexy, but really it just feels gross. Still, it’s worked; the chip is on the glass floor, next to Carter’s outstretched hand, and Bucky picks it up and runs back toward the ramp.

Thank God for his metal arm, because he’s running out of energy now, and if he didn’t have it, he can’t imagine how he’d pull himself back up over that fucking railing. _C’mon, you fucker,_ he tells himself, as he somehow heaves his body back onto the catwalk. _Couple more steps and this is over, and we can all go the fuck home._

And that’s when Carter shoots him.

 

It’s like it’s all happening in slow motion, and Steve is helpless to do anything but watch. He sees the bloodstain blossoming through the dark blue fabric of Bucky’s uniform, sees Bucky’s body jerk with the impact of the bullet and then, thank God, sees him instinctively clench his metal hand, grabbing onto a railing. Bucky scrunches his eyes shut and clenches his teeth, which tells Steve it’s a bad hit, hurts like hell and even with the serum, he doesn’t have long before shock and blood loss will take him down—but he’ll survive.

That’s what the logical part of his brain is telling him. The rest of it only knows that his Bucky is in trouble and that’s one thing that doesn’t get to fucking stand.

Steve doesn’t even know himself what he’s going to do it until he dashes across the glass floor and grabs the shield that’s lying there, abandoned. “Hey,” he yells, “pick on somebody your own size,” and he flings the shield at her, as hard as he can.

Ever since Steve lost the serum, the shield feels all wrong in his hands, but the principles are still there, and he’s not trying to do anything fancy; he just whales it at her as hard as he can. It doesn’t strike her hard enough to hurt, but it sure as hell gets her attention. Peggy turns and looks right at him again, and Steve’s anger abandons him as fast as it came. The last time he saw her, he was too stunned to take in more than that one frozen image of her face that’s probably burned into his brain forever, now. This time he’s seeing her clearly, all of her: the heavy stance and tense lines of her back and shoulders that don’t match up with the woman he knew at all, as opposed to the face he’s drawn from memory a hundred times, the flat line of her lips and that little crease between her eyebrows that are one hundred percent Peggy all the way through. It’s the same expression she used to have when she studied maps or coded transmissions, like there’s something there that will resolve itself into clarity if she just wills it hard enough.

“People are gonna die, Peg,” he says, quiet. “I can’t let that happen.” When she still doesn’t move, he tries one more time: “Please,” he says. “Don’t make me do this.”

For a minute, he actually believes he sees something in her eyes: a sense of familiarity, maybe, a flash of an old half-formed memory that she can’t quite place? Then she narrows her eyes sharply, and brings the gun up, and something new joins the mix of competing emotions in Steve’s gut: the oh-shit feeling of having pissed off someone who can trample his weak ass into the pavement.

Steve’s not crazy, or stupid, and he _does_ know his limits, whatever Bucky says about it; there are still some kinds of fighting he’s good at. Even with a broken arm, and asthma, and a couple of deep-tissue bruises he’s been forcefully ignoring since the elevator, he’s pretty sure his training with May would still let him stand up to an ordinary opponent. But this is no ordinary fight, and even without the serum, Peggy was never an ordinary opponent. If he has any chance, it’s in the element of surprise, so instead of running, he dives forward, going for the shield that hit the floor at her feet. Well, he’s right: that’s one thing she definitely isn’t expecting him to do, and his fingers graze the vibranium edge before she moves, not even bothering to shoot him, just aiming a kick at the sling looped over his left shoulder.

When her boot connects, fireworks go off behind Steve’s eyes. He rolls to the side, but somehow the fingers of his right hand clench around the edge of the shield, and that’s all he wanted to get out of this maneuver. Before the bursts of light even fade out of his vision, he’s getting back up again, a little shaky, but holding the shield in his right hand and facing her. She comes at him fast, and he brings the shield up, planting his feet and bracing his body like he did in the old days. Unlike the old days, he doesn’t have two hundred pounds of muscle to put behind it, and she knocks him sprawling again, but he’s getting back into the rhythm of it now, pulling his feet up underneath him, pushing himself up and getting ready for the next swing. Because the very first thing Steve Rogers ever learned in a fight, before he knew anything about tactics or strategy or anything else, for that matter, was how to take a hit.

“Come on,” he says, panting. “I could do this all day.”

She’s coming toward him, but she pauses in mid-step, and it’s almost imperceptible, but this time, there’s definitely something there. Just a tiny spark of recognition, but it’s enough. _Just a little more time,_ he thinks, or maybe even prays. _Please God, just a few more words, and I know I can make her remember._

Then he hears Bucky’s voice over the comms, faint but distinct, saying, “Charlie lock,” and the world comes apart around him.


	14. Not Without You

“Barnes, get out of there!” Maria Hill is screaming in Bucky’s earpiece, as if he hasn’t figured out by now that the helicarrier is being shot at by two other helicarriers at a rate of approximately a zillion rounds per second. Truth is, Bucky doesn’t have _time_ to be worried about the fact that the ship he’s on is about to be blasted out of the sky, any more than he has time to fuss about the bullet wound in his side, because he has something much worse than either of those things going on: about fifteen feet below him, Steve is facing off against Peggy Carter.

 _Damn_ it, Bucky thinks, leaning over the safety rail and staring down at them. Why couldn’t Steve have stayed mad about the closet thing for another five minutes? That’s all it would have taken to keep him out of this clusterfuck entirely.

Carter is staring at Steve like she can’t believe this is happening, which Bucky has to admit is a pretty reasonable reaction to a tiny blonde barking orders at people who could snap his spinal column with one hand. “Peggy, we have to get out of here,” he yells at her, and then he turns—he actually _turns his back to her,_ the person who was beating the crap out of him thirty seconds ago—to look up at Bucky. “Go,” he shouts. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Right. And has Steve got a bridge to sell him, too? Bucky knows exactly what’s about to happen, which is that Steve is about to try to appeal to the better nature of the suicidally reckless brainwashed assassin. The solution is obvious: somebody’s gotta clunk her over the head with something heavy and then they can drag her to a nice, safe padded cell somewhere. And as usual, he’s gotta do everything himself.

Steve doesn’t even get to finish yelling, “Bucky, no!” before Bucky goes over the safety rail for the second time, and then he has the incredible nerve to look angry when Bucky hits the floor. “What are you doing? I got this!”

“Bae, you know I love you, but there is no universe in which you got this.” Bucky takes a step toward Carter, who immediately shifts her stance from defense to offense. She’s going for another weapon, and his hand goes to one of the knives on his belt, but neither of them gets to draw, because just then, there’s a squeal of tearing metal, and a massive steel girder drops from somewhere up above them.

Steve sees it coming, but as the one person in the room without serum-enhanced reflexes, he’s too slow to get out of the way—which makes it a good fucking thing Bucky didn’t listen to him and stay up on the catwalk, doesn’t it? He knocks Steve out of the way, but the impact shakes the glass floor and throws them both off their feet.

When Bucky pushes himself up, his ears are ringing, and the pain in his side has gone from feeling like he’s been punched to feeling like his whole torso is on fire. He looks for Steve and finds him on the floor, white as a sheet, but already pushing himself up with his good arm. Somewhere in the chaos he’s shattered his glasses and lost his hearing aid, and he has a split lip and a deep graze across his cheek—Bucky no longer knows if that’s from the fall or from one of the punches Carter threw at him. He shouts something at Bucky, which Bucky can’t hear the first time; he shakes his head, and it resolves itself into, “Are you okay?”

Okay? Of course Bucky’s not okay, he’s been _shot,_ for fuck’s sake. So, naturally, he says, “Yeah. You?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, with roughly equal truthfulness. Then he looks behind him, and Bucky follows his gaze toward the fallen girder. Carter is on the floor, trapped under the massive steel beam. She’s not dead—she’s moving, trying to get out, but she’s stuck, and his first thought is, _Good,_ because it means she won’t be coming at either of them anymore.

Then he looks again. Carter is struggling, trying to claw her way out from under the metal, but that isn’t the thing that kills Bucky. It’s the look in her eyes: desperate, trapped, _scared._ “Aw, shit,” he mutters. “Okay, Stevie, I’ll lift, you pull.”

“Buck.” Steve grabs his arm and shakes his head. “You’re hurt. Get out of here. I’ll catch up, just go.”

“What, you’re gonna pick that beam up yourself?”

“For God’s sake, Buck,” Steve says, and all of a sudden, Bucky can see what he was missing before—that Steve is finally reaching the end of his own rope, and the desperation in his eyes isn’t much less than what he saw in Carter’s. “Don’t you see that if you die here, this was all for nothing?”

Does _Steve_ not get it that that’s exactly why Bucky pulled that stunt with the closet? “Nobody’s dying,” he says. “We’ll get her out, then we’ll get out, then we’ll all go out for shawarma.” He stands up, then immediately crashes back down again. “Fuck!”

“Buck,” Steve says, eyes wide, and Bucky follows his gaze downward and oh, that’s just fucking great: the reason he can’t stand up is that he’s got a six-inch piece of shrapnel stuck in his thigh. There’s only one solution, and it’s really gonna suck. Before he can let himself think too hard, he reaches down with his metal hand and yanks it out.

“No, you idiot,” Steve shouts at him, too late, and wow, nobody can accuse Bucky of having a weak stomach, but the resulting gush of blood is kind of spectacular. “I can’t believe you—Jesus, Buck.” Steve throws his arms around Bucky, who’s willing to admit that he’s _maybe_ kind of having a little trouble staying upright, and says, “We gotta get some pressure on that before you bleed out.”

“I got it.” Bucky pulls the belt off his uniform—good thing nobody who has a dirty mind is here to make any cracks about that—and cinches it around his thigh before Steve can stop him. Yeah, he knows tourniquets are usually a bad idea, but a doctor can yell at him later if it means the leg will take his weight now. Bucky takes a few hobbling steps toward the girder, kneels beside it, and works his fingers under the ledge.

Nifty things, metal arms: you can be tired to the point of exhaustion, but they never are. His non-reinforced back and right shoulder howl in protest, but he feels the girder shift, and the second it does, Steve grabs Carter to haul her out from under it. How he manages it one-handed Bucky will never know, but it’s a good thing he does, because the moment Carter gets free, Bucky has to drop the beam. The world is starting to gray in and out, and little spots are floating in his field of vision.

All of which means he’s pretty much totally unprepared when Carter slips out of Steve’s grasp and lunges at him.

For one terrible second, Bucky thinks this is how he’s gonna go out, stabbed to death by a crazy assassin before the helicarrier can even crash. And then Steve is between them. This time he’s not messing around with the shield, thank fuck; he’s finally remembered to draw the gun Bucky made him take earlier, and he might not be the crack shot that Bucky is, but it would be impossible to miss at this distance, aiming straight at her heart.

“You wanna kill Captain America,” he says, “you gotta go through me to do it.”

Carter looks furious for an instant, and then her eyes narrow, and Bucky has a horrible feeling that she’s decided to accept his proposition. Only now Steve has her attention, and he dodges to the side as she comes at him. Of course he had no intention of shooting her, not even to slow her down; it was just a bluff to lead Carter away from him.

_Goddammit, Stevie, you heroic fucking dumbass._

Carter tackles Steve and slams him into the glass floor, and somebody is screaming and he realizes it’s her voice, a long, incoherent howl that’s rage and confusion and God knows what else all mixed up together. Those lessons with May really _must_ be paying off, though, because somehow, impossibly, Steve manages to break her hold on him, and then he gets back up on his feet one more time. He’s still holding the gun, somehow, but it’s pointed at the floor, as if he’s forgotten that it’s in his hand at all. “You know me,” he tells her, looking straight into her eyes.

“No, I damn well _don’t!”_

Carter charges him again, throwing another punch that knocks him flying, and now something else is starting to be a problem: the whole helicarrier is lurching wildly to one side. Bucky wasn’t too worried about that at first, since he knows Tony recently revamped most of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s engine designs and Tony _loves_ building redundancies into any system he doesn’t directly control, but now he’s starting to seriously worry that it’s going to fall out of the air. Steve wobbles dangerously, but he finds his footing again, and he stands up straight, looking at her.

“Your name,” he says, “is Margaret Elizabeth Carter. You’ve known me since 1943.”

Carter is panting, looking haunted and stricken, sweat streaming down her face. “Shut _up!”_ she shouts, and swings, and only the shudder of the helicarrier finally losing the aft engine keeps Steve from taking another punch. He steps back, out of the way, but his eyes are locked on her now. Slowly, he holds the pistol out and lets it drop out of his hand. Huge chunks of the helicarrier floor are starting to shatter, and Bucky is helpless to do anything but watch as the gun drops like a stone toward the surface of the Potomac.

“I’m not gonna fight you, Peg,” he says. “You’re my friend.”

One thing Bucky knows for sure: he’s never seen anyone look as fucked up as Carter does in that moment. She’s shaking her head, and her right hand is clenched into a fist that she keeps raising, then lowering again. “You’re my mission,” she says, and although her voice stays flat, now Bucky sees what Steve must have already known: she _knows_ there’s something there, knows she’s lost something and her brain won’t let her get it back.

Maybe it’s shock and maybe it’s something else, but Bucky finds his own eyes starting to blur with tears. _Imagine forgetting Steve. Imagine being face to face with the best person in the world and knowing you should know him, but you don’t._ He can’t get his head around it. God, here they are at the end of the world, and once again, Steve had to go and be right. Not about how it’s all worthless if he dies—that’s just Steve being all goddamn melodramatic—but about why they had to try to save Carter. What was done to her was so evil and so wrong that they can’t _not_ try to try to put it right again, even if it costs both of them everything.

And considering that more pieces of the helicarrier are shearing off and plummeting out of the sky with every minute, it looks like it’s going to do exactly that.

Bucky knows he should be angry. And a distant part of him is, he guesses—angry with himself for not being able to fix this mess, angry at the whole world because it’s not enough that it took everything from both Steve and Peggy once already, now it’s doing it all over again. But even the anger feels distant now, like something that was important a long time ago. Is this what dying feels like? Bucky doesn’t know anymore; everything seems unnecessarily complicated, and he’s so, so tired. He’s pretty sure his part in this is over, and that doesn’t feel as bad as he thought it would. All things considered, he guesses he only has one real regret.

_Oh, Stevie, I wanted to marry you so bad._

“You’re my mission,” Carter repeats, and Bucky rakes his hair out of his eyes and forces himself to look at her, through the blur that seems to have become a permanent fixture of his vision. Steve is on the floor now—did he fall or did she knock him down? He guesses it doesn’t matter. Steve’s face is a mess, spattered with blood all over, one eye swollen almost shut. “Why didn’t you leave me?” she says, in a hoarse voice that’s hardly more than a whisper. “Why the bloody hell didn’t you go when you could?”

Steve smiles, even though blood is dripping from the side of his mouth, and breathes in a long, slow breath. “Couldn’t,” he says, every word an effort. “Not without you, Peg. Never without you.”

When Bucky thinks back on it later, everything else about this scene will be clouded over by shock. But he happens to be looking right at her face at the moment when whatever has been stuck inside her head all this time finally shakes loose. He sees her freeze, sees her wide brown eyes blink, slowly, as she remembers—

And then the glass floor directly under Steve’s feet gives out.

Bucky hears somebody scream, and it takes him a second to realize it’s him. Carter doesn’t. She springs to her feet and shoots a desperate look at him, and he sees an expression he knows way too well: a soldier who needs orders. Okay, well, that’s something he can do. After all, he’s a fucking Captain. “Go,” he says. “Save him.” And when she doesn’t move fast enough: “For fuck’s sake, soldier, _go!”_

Carter stares at him for another second, like remembering Steve has made her forget Bucky even existed. Then she turns, runs to the edge of the shattered floor, and does a surprisingly graceful swan dive out of the helicarrier.

Bucky flops back to the deck. He’d love to do something heroic here, he really would, and failing that, he’d just like to drag himself over to where Carter jumped and look down to see if he can see her—or Steve—in the river. The carrier isn’t as high as it was, which means that _if_ Steve hit the water at the right angle, and _if_ somebody fishes him up quickly, he might actually make it through this. It’s not like he doesn’t have a record of surviving worse. Bucky makes a conscious decision to believe that Carter is going to fish him out of the Potomac, probably hissing and spitting like a wet cat, but alive. That’s the part that matters; what happens from there is their business. It would be good if they could be happy, though. They both _deserve_ to be happy.

 As for Bucky, well. He has a vague feeling that he should think bleeding out in a flying aircraft carrier is a bigger deal, but he’s just not into that whole thing right now. He wonders, in a distant way, if dying is going to hurt. He wonders if he’ll see his mom. That part doesn’t sound awful. He closes his eyes.

That’s when there’s a super-loud swooshing noise, and he opens his eyes and finds a red and gold mask looking him in the face.

Okay, that’s weird. Isn’t Tony supposed to be on the other side of the world or something? It figures he couldn’t even let a guy lay down and die in peace. Bucky opens his mouth, licks blood off his lower lip, and tries to think of something properly snarky to say. But before he comes up with anything, the helmet opens, and the face that looks back at him isn’t Tony’s at all; it’s Pepper Potts’.

 _Fuck me,_ he thinks. _Okay, yeah, sure, she has the whole Extremis super-healing thing, but when the fuck did Pepper learn how to fly?_

Pepper hovers in front of him for a second, looking him over with a little frown. She reaches up and touches a comm link on the side of the helmet. “Director Hill, this is Rescue,” she says. “I’ve got Captain America. Repeat: he’s alive. I’ve got him.”

 

By the time Steve gets around to what feels like the extreme effort of opening his eyes, two things have already registered on his consciousness: one, Bucky isn’t beside him, and two, he feels like shit. His whole body hurts, with the worst of the pain in his chest, which feels like something heavy is sitting on it. Damn, is he sick again? Maybe he’s got a fever, and Bucky decided to let him sleep in. He has a feeling, though, that there’s something he has to wake up for, something that’s impor—

It all crashes back to him at once: the carriers, Hydra, Peggy. _Bucky._ His eyes fly open, and Sam is sitting in a chair beside the bed—which is a hospital bed, of course—reading a book. Before Steve has time to get any words out, he says, without looking up, “Hey, dumbass.”

“Sam,” Steve says, his voice coming out as a croak, and Sam holds up one hand before he can say anything else.

“Before you ask, Bucky’s okay. He’ll need some time to recover, but he’s gonna be fine. So am I, by the way, and thanks for asking about _me_ any of the last four times you woke up.”

Steve lets out an involuntary groan. A blurry memory is coming back to him: swimming up from unconsciousness long enough to grab a nurse’s hand and ask if Bucky was okay before letting himself drop off again. He hates losing time, but he’ll deal with that later. “What about Peggy?”

“Nobody’s seen her since the wreck. And believe me, they’ve looked.”

“She’s not dead,” Steve says, and when Sam’s expression makes it clear that he’s not sure this is good news, he adds, “She pulled me from the river, Sam. She saved my life.”

“Mm,” Sam says, like he’s trying not to sound skeptical.

Fine. They can have that argument later, too. “How bad is Bucky hurt?”

“You’re not gonna ask about yourself? Look, your boyfriend took a bullet, nicked an artery, and almost bled out, so it should tell you something that between the two of you, you’re the one who’s in worse shape right now. Like eighty percent of your body is hematomas, that broken cheekbone’s gonna need surgery, and after that almost-drowning stunt you pulled, the doctors are pretty sure that you getting pneumonia isn’t an _if_ , it’s a _when.”_

“Don’t care,” Steve says, and for the moment, he honestly doesn’t. Bucky’s alive and Peggy’s alive, and Sam’s alive, and— “How’s Nat?”

“Better than any of us,” Sam says, not even bothering to disguise his pride. “Since you asked, the reason she’s not here right now is she’s been called to Capitol Hill to testify about what happened. The CIA has been finding some real interesting stuff in those files she released. A bunch of Senators are going on trial for treason because of us, not to mention we kind of tore down an international security organization and put a couple thousand people out of work. Most of the spin’s in our favor since, you know, Nazis, but it’s a good thing Tony keeps a lot of lawyers on retainer. So, tell me,” Sam finishes, “are you proud of yourself right now?”

Steve manages a weary grin. “A little,” he says, and Sam glares at him and makes a point of going back to his book.

 

“Kids these days,” Tony says, walking into Bucky’s hospital room. “They never call, they never write, they bust up massive Nazi conspiracies and don’t even invite you to the party. Come on, Barnes, you _know_ how much I love the wanton destruction of government property.”

Bucky turns his head in Tony’s direction and scowls, to cover the fact that he could just about weep with relief. He’s coming off the anesthetic from his second surgery, which means he’s been awake just long enough to be reassured again that Steve is okay (for a value of “okay” that involves long-term hospitalization, but at least that limits the amount of trouble he can get himself into), his friends are okay, and his sisters are okay and are, in fact, on their way to D.C. on one of the private planes that Pepper can summon at a moment’s notice. Still, in a weird way, having Tony here makes him feel like it’s really going to be all right. “Funny you should mention that,” he says, “’cause I think I remember someone hacking Fury’s files on a helicarrier a year ago and saying, ‘Now I know all of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s dirty little secrets,’ yet somehow _entirely missing_ the whole infiltrated-by-Nazis thing.”

“You’re bringing that up now? You wound me, Barnes, you really do.” Tony slides into the chair by Bucky’s bed, and just for a second, he lets the mask drop and puts a hand on Bucky’s right shoulder. “You should have _told_ me,” he says.

“We wanted to, Tony. We couldn’t. There was no way to bring you in without tipping them off to where we were and what we were planning. I still don’t know how Pepper found out.” He pauses. “By the way, you know Pepper is, like, ten thousand times more badass in the Iron Man armor than you are, right?”

“Good to know your major concern after almost dying is ‘who wore it better,’ Project Runway.” Tony pats his shoulder and says, “I’m glad you’re okay, buddy.”

“Thanks, Tones.”

“Can I get you anything? Food, coffee, a couple more fourteen-billion-dollar government vehicles to crash?”

Bucky smiles tightly. “The only thing I want is to see Steve, and they look at me like I’m stupid every time I ask if I can go down to the ICU.”

“What, they’re still keeping you in bed like it hasn’t been a whole thirty-one hours since you almost bled to death? Completely unreasonable.”

“I know, right?” If life was even a little bit fair, he would have managed to stay asleep until he could wake up next to Steve, in the same room and preferably the same bed. But because the universe is stupid, it turns out that Steve is under semi-quarantine in the ICU until they’re satisfied that all the river gunk is out of his lungs and he’s not about to develop some fascinating new undocumented-by-medical-science kind of respiratory infection, and Bucky, while technically in stable condition, still needs some more work on his gashed leg and a couple of torn ligaments he didn’t even notice at the time, assuming he wants to do crazy things like ever actually walking again. Bodies: what a fucking pain in the ass.

“Well,” Tony says, “fortunately, you’re dealing with a super-genius now, and I have a super-genius solution.” He holds out a datapad. _“Video chat,_ dummy. I already gave one of these to the Brave Little Toaster and told him to expect your call.”

“Tony…” Bucky blinks. It’s such a simple thing, but nobody else has thought of it, and it means everything to him. “Thanks.”

“Thank me by cutting me in on the fun next time. Now go have an adorable loving reunion with your sugar daddy. My number’s in there too if you need anything else. Meanwhile, I’m heading over to the bar across the street. They’ve got a TV playing CSPAN and I hear the Ethics Oversight Committee is losing its shit in real time. It’s gonna be like Christmas.”

Bucky waits for Tony to zip out of the room. Then he rubs his eyes—because the air in the hospital is really annoyingly dry, definitely not for any other reason—and taps the video chat icon. It’s only a second before Steve’s face appears. He’s blurry and partly out of frame, like he can’t figure out how to make it focus, but it’s him, he’s alive, he’s okay.

“Buck,” he says, and apparently the whole dry air thing is an epidemic. “Bucky, I was—” is as far as he gets, before he can’t find any more words.

Bucky swallows hard. Then he says, as sharply as he can, “So what was that ‘pick on somebody your own size’ business, punk? That doesn’t even make sense _._ I mean, if you’d even said ‘somebody your own age,’ that would’ve worked.”

Steve grins as wide as somebody whose face is still mostly a swollen black-and-blue mess can grin. “I’ll keep it in mind for next time.”

 _“Next_ time? Next time, punk, you’re staying the fuck home where you belong!”

“Oh, really? You gonna lock me in another closet?” Steve says, and that little line of disapproval appears between his eyebrows. “Because that was not okay, Buck.”

“I know it wasn’t,” Bucky says, letting all his harshness drain away. “But you were putting yourself in harm’s way when you didn’t have to, and that shit isn’t okay either. I’m sorry my methods were kinda fucked up, but I’m not apologizing for trying to keep you safe. I like your stupid face way too much to let it get broken. Ask me to be objective about anything else in the world, but not about you, Stevie. I love you too much for that.”

There’s a short silence after that, and Bucky can see Steve’s throat working as he searches for something to say. Then Sam’s voice, off-camera and deadpan, says, “You know, if I didn’t know this is how you two dorks say _I love you,_ I’d think you had some serious issues here.”

“Sam!” Bucky yelps. “Jesus Christ, I’m baring my fucking soul here and _Sam’s_ listening in?”

“I was gonna tell you,” Steve says, but goddamn him, Bucky can see that he’s trying not to crack up at this turn of events.

“Fuck you, Wilson! Get out and let us talk to each other, asshole!” Bucky shouts, and he can hear Sam’s laughter trailing off as he heads out into the hall.

He gives Steve a minute to finish laughing, even though it’s making him cough, because honestly, Steve’s smile is doing him more good than all the painkillers cruising around his bloodstream right now. But they do have to get this one thing out of the way. “Hey,” he says, and Steve looks up at the seriousness in his voice. “We need to talk about Peggy.”

Steve doesn’t flinch, exactly, but his smile vanishes. “You know nothing’s changed,” he says.

“Stevie,” Bucky says, _“everything_ has changed.”

“No,” Steve says, and there it is, that little jutting thing he does with his jaw when he’s about to get stubborn about something. “Nothing has changed—”

“We need to help her.”

“—Because I still want to marry you just as much as I ever did.” Then Steve blinks as Bucky’s words register. “What?”

“What?” Bucky echoes.

“You want to help Peggy?”

“Of course I do,” Bucky says. “You still want to get married?”

“I just said so, didn’t I? I don’t understand why you’re having such a hard time with this.”

“I… I just figured that, you know, the Peggy thing, and then on top of that, S.H.I.E.L.D. falling apart... You know we’re probably both out of jobs at the very least and either of us could technically still get arrested any second, so I figured wedding planning was kind of, you know, on hold.”

“Well, I’m taking it off hold,” Steve says. “If we put our future on hold for every little thing that comes along, we’ll never get anywhere.”

“Every little thing,” Bucky repeats, with a laugh.

“You heard me. As soon as we’re both out of here and we can both walk down the aisle, we’re doing this. Deal?”

“What about looking for Peggy?” Bucky says, very softly.

Steve looks straight into the camera, equal parts determined and grim. “I don’t even know where to start,” he says. “She could be literally anywhere in the world by now.”

“I dunno. Whatever the town is in England where she grew up? Maybe get Jarvis to look through the Hydra files and see if she had a home base somewhere? Stevie, we gotta at least try.”

“She won’t make it easy,” says Steve. “Peggy… you know, she never really was the type to accept help.”

“Then it’s a good thing I have a lot of experience dealing with stubborn assholes who won’t let anybody help them. Steve, this isn’t just about you and her. It’s about…” Bucky takes a deep breath. “Okay, so it kinda fucked me up when I realized I’d been working for the bad guys, especially when Zola put the idea in my head that I might’ve, you know, colluded.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Steve says dryly.

“I’m not gonna pretend I know anything about Peggy’s mental state right now,” Bucky goes on. “I didn’t even know the old Peggy, before she had God knows how much trauma on top of everything. But I think I know how I’d feel if it was me. And I guess, well, all the stuff I did when I was a sniper and I didn’t know I was working for Hydra—I know you don’t think I have anything to feel guilty about, but I do. It’s not that two wrongs make a right, but maybe the way for me to feel better about it is to help somebody else come back from it. I don’t know. Does this sound stupid?”

This time, Steve is quiet for long enough that Bucky wonders whether the video feed is frozen or whether he’s just colossally fucked up by lugging his own baggage into this already immensely fucked-up situation. Then Steve says, hoarsely, “Every time I think I can’t love you more, Buck, you go and surprise me all over again,” and this time Bucky doesn’t bother to pretend he’s not crying. It’s not just because of Steve, either. The other part of it is that just this once, doing the right thing doesn’t feel so quite so impossible after all.

 

Sam is playing Angry Birds in the hospital visitors’ lounge when Natasha slips into the seat beside him. It’s not that he’s gotten used to her coming and going almost silently so much as he’s resigned himself to perpetually being on the verge of a heart attack, so he just says, “Hey,” and slides his arm around her when she scoots up against him. “How’d it go?” he asks, as if he wasn’t live-streaming a video of her testimony right up until she told the entire special investigations committee to fuck itself and walked out of the courthouse.

“Too soon to tell,” she says. She looks tired.

“Well, they didn’t arrest you. That’s something.”

“Oh, they did. I escaped. The SWAT team should be along any minute now.”

“Okay, you know how we talked about that thing you do where I can’t tell whether you’re kidding?”

Natasha smiles. Then she stops smiling. “Sam,” she says, “I need to talk to you about something.”

Sam has learned not to assume anything with Natasha, at this point. “Okay,” he says. “Hit me.”

“Well,” she says, “the thing is, I haven’t been completely honest with Steve regarding some of the things I know about Peggy Carter.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wheeeeeee (I'm not crying, you're crying).
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has supported me and this fic so far, and I'm so happy that you're along for the ride. I'll be taking a short break after this chapter in order to start on my (first ever) Stucky Big Bang project, but I'll be coming back to this one as soon as possible!


	15. Secrets and Lies

“Rise and shine, little campers,” Tony chirps as he bounces into the hospital room, and Bucky lifts his head off the pillow, squints at him, and gives him the finger. He’s still got a shit-ton of Dilaudid in his system—his body just eats up painkillers these days, _and thanks a fucking lot for_ that, _super-metabolism_ —but he’s not too out of it to know that 1) it’s way too fucking early to deal with Tony Stark and 2) Tony didn’t even have the decency to bring him any coffee.

“For pity’s sake, Tony,” Steve mumbles from the other bed, coughs, and flops over to give him the patented Steve Rogers Disappointed Look. “This is a hospital, there are sick people here. Have a little courtesy.”

“You might hate me now, but you’re gonna love me in a minute,” Tony says. “Trust me.”

“Last time I trusted you, you gave your home address to a terrorist and almost got yourself killed,” says Steve, pushing himself up on one elbow and wheezing. Bucky knows he’ll sound better once he sits up for a few minutes to clear his lungs, but he still cringes. In the cosmic scheme of things, he and Steve both got off lucky in that neither of them drowned in the Potomac or bled to death or broke more than a couple bones; in reality, it’s hard to feel grateful when the love of your life has spent the last week hacking up a lung in a bed three feet away and you can’t even sit up in the uncomfortable plastic chair to hold his hand. Bucky would’ve just crawled into Steve’s bed and stayed there if one of the nurses hadn’t reamed him out about how desperately Steve needs rest, which means he specifically _doesn’t_ need a twitchy bundle of nightmares and PTSD lying next to him while he’s trying to sleep.

So, yeah, his life is currently kind of a shitshow, but for Steve’s sake, he’s trying hard not to lose his sense of humor about it. “That’s nothing,” he says. “Last time _I_ trusted Tony, I asked him to load up my tablet with some good sci-fi novels and he brought me _Space Raptor Butt Invasion.”_

“Yeah, yeah, look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t love _Space Raptor Butt Invasion._ But back to the subject at hand,” Tony says, “I have good news for the two of you. I’m busting you out of this joint. Your respective medical teams agree that there’s nothing else they can do here that can’t be done outpatient in New York. My jet’s waiting for you at Dulles.”

“I’d love to sleep in my own bed tonight,” Steve admits, “but—”

“But nothing, Rogers, the Tower’s creepy with nobody but me and Pepper in it.”

“So, given that neither of us is mobile at the moment, who’s gonna actually take care of us, Tones?” Bucky asks. “You or Dum-E? Because I’ll take Dum-E, if I get a choice.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “For your information, I hired you two some certified live-in medical assistance until you’re back on your feet. Got a recommendation from Barnes’ lawyer friend, the one you asked me to put on retainer. For a nurse and a lawyer, they’re both surprisingly high on Hydra’s threat list, incidentally. I’ll be cross-referencing that for all my hires in the future. Claire,” he calls out into the hallway, “come meet the Scooby Gang.”

The woman who follows Tony into the room impresses Bucky instantly with her cool can-and-will-call-you-on-your-bullshit expression, which is something he, for one, is willing to admit the Avengers as a group could use more of. She looks at the two of them, completely unimpressed by the amount of bandages and stitches and other battle damage they’ve accumulated between them, and says flatly, “Hi. I’m a nurse. What stupid thing did the two of you do?”

“Jumped out a window,” Steve says. “In my defense, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“I’m Captain America,” Bucky says. “And, uh, that’s pretty much my final answer.”

Claire makes a _tch_ sound and goes back to the hall without further comment, and Tony says, “We’ll be back, don’t go anywhere,” like Bucky hasn’t heard that joke three hundred times in the last two weeks. He’s almost out of the room when he turns back, and says, “Seriously, you two, can’t wait to have you home,” and Bucky swallows the sudden lump in his throat as he buzzes out again.

Steve swings his legs over the side of the bed, and Bucky, for all his own problems, discovers that he can still move pretty damn fast if he wants to; he’s there in a second, hands on Steve’s shoulders. “Hey! The fuck you think you’re doing, punk?”

“Getting up, getting dressed, getting out of this hospital. I figured you’d be all for that.”

“Not if you’re gonna fall over, sheesh.” Bucky hesitates, then sits on the bed beside Steve and slides his right arm around him. “Stevie,” he says, “we gotta tell him.”

“I still don’t see what good it would do,” Steve begins, pulling away and picking the argument up right where he left it off last time. “I think we should spare him the grief.”

“You really think you can? Forever, I mean? Hydra’s records are all out there, Steve. Ten bucks says Jarvis already has the whole thing cracked open on a server someplace, and if Tony ever decides to go digging around in it, you know the first thing he’s gonna do is basically Google himself, and then the whole thing’s gonna come out.”

“And what if he never goes looking? Or what if he doesn’t _want_ to know? He’s my friend, Buck. I don’t want to make it any harder on him.”

“I don’t like this,” Bucky mumbles. After two weeks off his own meds while he was in and out of surgery and a couple of massive panic attacks when assorted members of the hospital staff came at him with needles, he realizes he’s not exactly in a position to throw stones about irrational behavior, but Steve is still being weirdly cagey about this. There’s no way in hell it’s because he thinks Tony can’t handle the truth, either. If it was anybody else, Bucky would take it as a _please don’t make me get into a big emotional thing when I already feel like shit_ scenario, but for Steve, defying a 102° fever, a broken arm, and literal doctors’ orders so he can do what’s right is basically Tuesday.

Nah, Bucky is pretty sure the truth is that Steve has finally run up against some feelings he can’t bottle up and ignore, and it’s scaring the crap out of him.

“Okay, well, let’s just... I just need…”

“What?” Tony says, popping back into the room. Claire is behind him with a wheelchair, still looking dubious as hell about this whole business, which is frankly the most reassuring thing Bucky has seen in days. The little crinkle in Tony’s forehead, though… Anybody who didn’t know Tony wouldn’t see it, but Bucky does, and he knows: Tony is genuinely worried about both of them, and is trying, in his own weird and overbearing way, to be kind. It makes Bucky feel even shittier about keeping secrets from him. “C’mon, buddy, what do you need? Let Daddy buy it for you.”

“Jeez, Rhodey’s right, you do always have to make it weird,” Bucky says. “We’re talking about how we both just went through a massive trauma, okay? Steve was gonna say he needs time, Tones, and I don’t think even you could possibly have a TARDIS in your back pocket.” When Tony looks as abashed as Tony ever looks, Bucky relents and says, “Besides, you’re doing too much for us already. I’m really grateful, but you don’t have to fix everything for everybody.”

“No, but I owe you,” Tony says. “I wasn’t there when you needed me. I let you down.”

It’s a moment of genuine sincerity, and when Tony looks at him with big guilty eyes, Bucky feels even shittier about not telling Tony what the Zola-thing showed them on those viewscreens. He’s seen his fair share of death, but some things stick with a person, and when he shuts his eyes, he can still see that blurry black-and-white image of Peggy—of Faust, he should say, because who knows how much of Peggy was even functioning at that point—standing over two limp figures in a car, then turning, gun raised, to shoot out the security camera.

Maybe Steve is onto something after all, he thinks. If they do tell Tony, he’ll go digging for the truth, which will inevitably lead him to the backup copy of that video that has to exist somewhere for Zola to have downloaded it to his databanks. And nobody should have to watch their parents die like that. Be _murdered_ like that.

 _Okay, Stevie, you’re getting your way for now,_ he thinks, and says, “You don’t owe us a goddamn thing, Tones. If you have to make a big gesture, just show up at our wedding and buy us a really awesome toaster.”

“Do _not_ get us a toaster,” says Steve. “Get us the cookware set on our registry. It’s much nicer. Besides, knowing you, we’d wind up with something that would shoot laser beams but wouldn’t actually make _toast.”_

“We have a registry?” Bucky asks.

“Natasha has opinions about our kitchen,” says Steve. “I was going to be annoyed, but it turns out she has better taste than either of us, so…”

“You two aren’t going to know what hit you,” Tony says. “I will _bury_ you in elegant yet practical Le Creuset. Now come on, get moving, we’ve got a plane to catch.”

“Hang on,” Steve says. “Can we make a stop on the way? There’s something we need to do.”

 

Bucky had expected S.H.I.E.L.D. to throw together some kind of big gaudy monument for the sake of irony alone, but Nick Fury’s gravesite is plain and unassuming, just a headstone with his name and some dates and a Bible verse. In civilian clothes, Fury comes across as fairly unassuming himself. “So, you’ve both experienced this sort of thing before,” he says, as they approach the grave.

“You get used to it,” Steve says.

“Maybe _you_ do,” Bucky says. “I still think the whole back-from-the-dead number is weird as shit.”

Fury might look amused, if that was the kind of thing Fury ever did. “We’ve been data-mining Hydra’s files,” he says. “Looks like a lot of rats didn’t go down with the ship. We’re headed to Europe tonight. Either of you interested?”

“Yeah, we’re gonna give that one a hard pass,” Bucky says. “Wait, who’s _we?_ You mean you and Hill, right? Because, tell me you guys aren’t jumping right back in,” he says, turning to Sam and Natasha, who are walking up to them on one of the other little paths through the cemetery.

“No.” Natasha smiles slightly. “I blew all my covers. I gotta go figure out a new one.”

“And I go where she goes,” Sam says. “Just slower and with less gymnastics.”

Fury nods. “If anybody asks for me,” he says, gesturing at the grave, “tell them they can find me right here.” Then he walks away, leaving the four of them standing in a tight little knot, Bucky leaning on his crutches and Steve leaning on him, Sam with his arm around Natasha. Bucky wants to ask them where they’re headed, but his gut says to leave it alone.

“But you’re gonna come back to help us plan the wedding, right?” he says.

“This woman just faced down the U.S. government, and you think she has to be in Brooklyn to plan your stupid wedding?” Sam says.

“Touché,” Bucky agrees.

Natasha smiles faintly and turns to Steve. “That thing you asked for,” she says. “I called in a favor from Kiev.” She hands him a folder, and Bucky cringes; he isn’t as good with Cyrillic as he is with spoken Russian, but he can still parse the word _classified._ “Will you do me a favor and call your friend Kate?”

“Don’t you mean my assigned S.H.I.E.L.D. bodyguard?” Steve says, his tone unreadable.

“Just because she was doing a job doesn’t mean she doesn’t care, Steve.”

“So what’s her real name?”

“Sharon,” Natasha says. “And she really is as nice as her persona.”

Steve gives her a look that even Bucky can’t read, but he doesn’t argue either, which is something. He allows Natasha to pull him in for a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek, then do the same to Bucky. She turns to walk away, then stops. “Be careful, Steve,” she says, with a glance at the folder. “You might not want to pull on that thread.”

Steve doesn’t say anything to that, and Bucky doesn’t either, because they both know he’s going to do it anyway. Sam moves to follow Natasha, then stops, with a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “You’re going to go after Carter,” he says. It’s not a question.

“Nobody has to help me,” Steve says—to Sam, but also to Bucky, although he’s not looking at either of them. “But I have to do it.”

Sam nods, understanding, and Bucky glances past him toward Natasha, who’s already halfway back to the parking lot. “Nat has some threads of her own to pull on, doesn’t she?” he asks.

“Yeah,” says Sam, “and I don’t think she’s gonna like what she finds, either.”

“It’s good that you’re going with her,” Bucky says. “I’d say call if you need anything, but if there’s anything the two of you can’t handle, then honestly, I don’t want to know.” He pulls Sam in for a hug, which Sam endures with monumental patience before turning to Steve. “Hey, Rogers,” he says, “I know there’s absolutely no point saying this to somebody as crazy as you, but—would you at least try not to do anything stupid while we’re gone?”

Bucky starts grinning even before Steve opens his mouth, because the day hasn’t come yet when Steve Rogers can resist a setup like that. “How can I?” he says. “You’re taking all the stupid with you.” Then he also pulls Sam in for an awkward, one-armed hug before they split up, Sam following Natasha and the two of them making their way back toward Tony’s limo.

Bucky’s contentment lasts almost long enough for him to settle into his seat. “So did you all enjoy your cloak-and-dagger spy stuff?” Tony is asking, when he spots the folder. “What’s this, Rogers, you had enough of capitalism and you’re getting ready to defect?”

Steve’s hand tightens on the folder, and Tony notices, and Bucky notices Tony noticing and his heart sinks right down to the limo’s carpeted floor. “It’s genealogy stuff,” he says, before Steve can answer. “Remember I told you my grandparents were from Russia? Becca’s trying to trace our family tree and she got stuck, so Nat called in a favor with a buddy of hers who had access to some really old census records. See, there’s this whole thing with the last names because my great-granddad’s name was Ivan, which—”

“Okay, Barnes, I am begging you not to give me a lecture about Russian patronymics,” Tony says, and Bucky hopes his relief isn’t too evident, because he was about to completely run out of bullshit to spin. “Either of you want a drink? No? I’m having one.”

When he turns away to pour himself a glass of Scotch, Steve and Bucky have one of those whole conversations that happens entirely through eye contact, Steve’s side mostly consisting of _thanks_ and _sorry_ while Bucky’s consists of _I’m not convinced he’s buying it_ and _bae, I love you, but you fucking owe me one._ Still, Tony sips his Scotch and lets it go, and when he doesn’t come back to it over the next couple of days, doesn’t nag or pry or whine for more information, Bucky decides to take it as a miracle and move on, at least for now.

 

“So this is it,” Natasha says.

Sam looks at her, then follows her eyes to the end result of a month of searching. It’s about what he expected, and he knows that on some level, it’s what Natasha expected, too. Still, Natasha isn’t a freaking martyr about personal comfort the way Rogers is, and she wouldn’t have voluntarily endured weeks of bumpy roads and crowded train rides, awful weather and worse food, and late nights and long days of pawing through cramped, poorly-lit record rooms unless she had some hope of coming up with more than two little gravestones by a chain-link fence.

Sam doesn’t touch her, although he’d like to reach out and put a hand on her shoulder, and eventually she goes forward, kneels in front of one of them, and brushes her hand over the inscription. After a while, she turns and comes back to Sam. Her eyes are dry, and she’s wearing the little smile he recognizes for what it is: armor. “Well, it’s not as if it’s less than I had before,” she says. “At least now I know.”

She’s standing close enough for Sam to put his arm around her, so he does. Natasha is like a cat: she’ll come to him when she wants affection, but it’s always on her own terms, and when she’s done, she’s done. Part of the reason they suit each other so well is that he doesn’t just tolerate that, but actually likes knowing that whenever she’s with him, it’s because she genuinely wants to be. “You know,” he says, “one of the things I like best about you is that you don’t always expect me to have my therapist hat on.”

“I’ll bet you have some advice for me now, though.” It’s not exactly a question, but it’s not a refusal, either.

“If you wanted some,” he says, “I’d tell you that you wanted to find your family, and you’re right: now you know they’re not here. That sucks, but it doesn’t mean you can’t still have _a_ family. It just means your family comes with some assembly required.”

Natasha is quiet for what feels like a very long time, although it can’t be more than fifteen or twenty seconds, really. Then she says, “I haven’t told you, because it hasn’t come up, but I should tell you that there’s a… a kind of graduation ceremony in the Red Room. They… sterilize you. They tell you it’s one less thing to worry about, but really, it’s because there’s one thing that might become more important to you than your mission.”

Sam takes a minute to absorb that, because, well, it’s a lot. Then he says, “It’s one more way they took your choices away from you, is what it is. Did you want kids? Do you want kids?”

“I used to want them so badly that I tried to fake my way out of it, pretended to fail the Red Room program. They saw through me, though. They did it anyway, and after that I stopped caring about anything. I even stopped caring about the fact that I was killing for them.”

“Funny how you never say, ‘After they put me through a massive trauma, I stopped defying the people who had the power to hurt me.’ It’s always, ‘I did things, I’ve got red in my ledger.’ I’m all for taking responsibility for the choices you made, but you can do that and also know you wouldn’t have made those choices if you hadn’t been put in those situations. You’ve come a long way from the person you were back then.” Sam pauses. “You know, my wingman, Riley, he was adopted.”

“He was?”

“Yeah. I asked him once if he ever wanted to go looking for his birth parents. He said no, the people who raised him were his parents and that was enough. I said I couldn’t believe he didn’t want to know where he came from, and he said it didn’t matter where he started, it mattered where he went from there.”

“And you think that’s me?” Natasha says.

“I didn’t say that. I do think you’d make a good mom, if that’s what you want to do. I know for sure that _nobody_ would mess with the Romanoff kids on the playground. Hell, I’d support you just to see the other moms’ faces when you walk into the PTA.” Natasha actually snorts, before he adds, “Mostly, I’m saying you can make that choice for yourself. You might not be able to change the past, but you don’t have to stay the person they made you.”

Natasha looks at him speculatively. “Wow, Wilson, sometimes you say things that almost sound smart.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam says, resigned. Natasha might never be good at genuine vulnerability, but there are worse defense mechanisms than a little well-placed snark. Barnes is certainly proof of that. “What do you say we come back here tomorrow, pull some weeds, leave some flowers?”

“I think that sounds good,” Natasha says, slipping her arm around his waist. “And after that, we should get back to New York. I hear my family wants me to help plan a wedding.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gratitude to everyone who's waited so patiently for the next chapter of this! 
> 
> Coming soon: Bad decisions come home to roost, plus: Where the hell is Peggy?
> 
> For the record, Bucky laughed his ass off at _Space Raptor Butt Invasion._


	16. I Do

“Barnes, you awake?”

“Mmph.”

“Barnes, c’mon, man, it’s time to get up.”

“Fuck off, Hawk Guy.” Bucky pulls the blanket over his head and rolls over to go back to sleep.

“Okay, your funeral, but just so you know, it’s one-thirty.”

 _“What?”_ Bucky has never gotten out of bed _—_ well, okay, in this case, off Barton’s couch _—_ faster. Of course, he does it by rolling off the cushions still tangled up in the blanket, tripping, and almost faceplanting right into the coffee table. “Shit! We’re supposed to be there at _two,_ Barton! I asked you to be responsible for one thing one fucking time, what the fuck is wrong with you, you fu…” His voice trails off as the truth starts to dawn on him: Sam is holding up his phone and grinning, Clint is practically doubled over from suppressed laughter, and while all the digital clocks in Clint’s place are perpetually flashing 12:00, the one on the wall says _—_ “It’s 9:47, you asshole.”

Clint gives up any semblance of decorum and laughs so hard that he almost falls off his own chair. “Your _face,”_ he says. “Man, I wish you could see yourself right now.”

“He can,” says Sam, barely controlling his own glee. “I’ve got video.”

“If that hits the internet, I will murder you, Wilson. Delete it right now or I spill all my dirt on you two to Nat and Laura.”

“Please,” says Sam. “Like there’s anything you know that Natasha couldn’t find out if she wanted to.”

“And Laura knew I was an asshole when she married me,” Clint says, still laughing.

Bucky rubs the knee he banged on the floor when he tripped. “I hate you both so much right now.”

“There’s coffee,” says Clint.

“You’re forgiven.”

“Excuse you, I made the coffee,” says Sam.

“Yeah, but you’re more annoying than Clint.”

“How is that even possible?”

“Hey,” says Clint.

Bucky stands up and gives his body a long, spine-popping stretch before he flips them both his patented asymmetrical double bird and stumbles into the bathroom. He splashes some cold water on his face and squints at the mirror, frowning. It takes some doing for him to get drunk these days, much less stay drunk long enough to be hung over, but he must’ve been putting in a real good effort about eight hours ago. “Did I do anything last night that I’m not gonna be able to look Steve in the eye about?” he calls over his shoulder.

“You think you can out-stupid the guy who picked fights with Hydra _twice_ and jumps out fifth-story windows?” Sam comes to the door and looks at him. “As crazy as this sounds, B., I think you’ve finally found a relationship where you’re the smart one. Don’t try to shave,” he adds. “I’m taking you to Pops’. Last thing I need is you cutting your throat with those shaky hands.”

Bucky glares. “My hands are fine. How many times have you seen me make a perfect shot at two thousand meters?”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ve seen Barton take out a moving target from farther than that, and he still trips over his own dog. Don’t worry, I’ve got like fifteen bucks for the swear jar.” Sam pauses, watching him, then leans forward and puts a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “Hey. You okay?”

“Fuck no, I’m not okay, not with the two of you trying to give me a heart attack before I’m even awake.” Bucky meets Sam’s eyes, though, and Sam is looking at him with enough concern that he can’t bluff. “Okay, fine, I’m fuckin’ terrified.”

“About what?”

“All of it. Jeez. You know how I am about public speaking. What if I freak out in front of everybody and ruin the whole thing?”

Sam gives him a long skeptical look. “So you’re not worried, just for example, about the fact that today you’re promising you’ll only hook up with one person ever again for the rest of your life?”

“What? No, why would I be? I’ve known Steve was the one since like a month in. We’ve had all the big fights already, we’ve seen each other all kinds of sick and messed up, and we’ve dealt with more weird shit in eighteen months together than most people do in thirty years, so it’s not like we’re gonna wake up tomorrow and realize we made a terrible mistake or someth _—_ ” Bucky stops abruptly, narrowing his eyes. “You’re doing the thing.”

“What thing?”

 _“Dammit,_ Sam, you know the thing. Fine, I get it. Steve’s not gonna call off the wedding if I have one really badly timed panic attack. I just don’t want to screw this up and have him make the disappointed face at me, that’s all.”

“The disappointed face is a problem,” Sam agrees. “Listen, B., I’ll let you in on something my nana told me once. If you both say ‘I do,’ that means today is a success. Anything beyond that is a funny story to tell your grandkids.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Besides, I give it sixty-forty odds Doombots are gonna crash the whole thing before you get as far as the vows, anyway.”

“And that’s why you’re my best man, Wilson. Because I love your relentless optimism.”

“And because I’m better looking than Clint.”

“Well, I didn’t want to tell you, but you were actually my second choice. They wouldn’t let Lucky in the church.”

“Asshole,” Sam says, with deep affection. “Let’s go get your dumb ass married.”

 

Bucky has been staying out of the wedding plans because they make him hyperventilate. And yes, of course he knows it’s stupid that he’s survived multiple assassination attempts, the collapse of S.H.I.E.L.D., and the disaster on the helicarrier only to lose his shit about a party, but they don’t call them mental health issues because they make _sense._ It was never that he didn’t care; it was that he couldn’t seem to care an appropriate amount, with his stupid brain wanting to check out of the big decisions completely while still inflating every little one to crisis level. By the time Natasha finally got fed up with his inability to answer yes-or-no questions and told him to write up a list of dealbreakers and then get out of the way, it was a tremendous relief.

Of course, the flip side is that he shows up at the chapel with very limited knowledge of what to expect from his own wedding day. Clint and Sam are supposed to keep him from panicking, but there’s one brief moment when Natasha has drafted them both into last-minute errands and he ends up alone in an anteroom, trying not to sweat through the rented tux (sure, he could’ve bought one, but then certain people would find excuses for him to have to wear it again) and praying that nothing in the ceremony turns out to involve shields, flags, or killer robots.

“The name is Barnes, _James_ Barnes,” Tony says, in a surprisingly good Sean Connery impression, as he appears in the doorway.

Bucky looks up. “Hey, Tones. Aren’t you supposed to be best-manning for Steve right about now?”

“He’s fine. Sent me to tell you we’re starting in five minutes.” He looks Bucky up and down critically. “You look good. Not _me-_ in-a-tux good, but good. You pick out the cuff links yourself, or are they for PR?”

Bucky fingers the Army-star cuff link on his left sleeve, which keeps clicking against his metal hand. “They were my dad’s,” he says. “He wore them when he married Mom. I’m not sure how he’d feel about me wearing them today, though. I think he kind of hoped the whole bisexual thing was a phase. Or that I’d end up with a woman, and he could just let everybody believe he had a nice, normal straight kid.”

“You know, this might come as a surprise to you,” Tony says, leaning against the doorframe, “but I didn’t exactly have the best relationship with my dad, either.”

“This is my shocked face.”

“I know, it’s crazy. Who doesn’t like me, right? Especially not during my teenage-asshole phase. I like to think he would’ve been proud of who I am now, though. But you know what’s funny about that?”

“What?”

“That it _doesn’t fucking matter,_ Barnes. Our dads aren’t the ones who have to live our lives. And anyway, you’re Captain America. If there was any doubt about that, the whole helicarrier thing would’ve sealed it. Your old man would have to be an idiot not to be crazy proud of the way you gave all of Hydra the metal middle finger.”

Bucky manages a smile. “Thanks, Tony.”

“My pleasure, Double-oh-seventeen-seventy-six. Four minutes to showtime, okay?”

“Tony,” Bucky says, as he turns to leave.

Tony turns back, and Bucky almost blurts it out: _Your dad didn’t die in an accident, I know who killed him before he got to see you grow up, I can’t keep lying about this_. Only the fact that it would be unforgivably bad timing compels him to keep his mouth shut. “Your dad,” he says instead. “He’d be an idiot not to be proud of you, too.”

“You underestimate the Stark capacity for idiocy,” Tony says, shrugging, before he walks away.

Bucky takes a deep breath, steadying himself against the wall as Sam and Clint return and he hears the music start up in the chapel. “Ready?” Sam asks, and he nods. He’s as ready as he’ll ever be.

 

If it had been up to Bucky, the wedding really would have been the thirty-five-dollar courthouse special, but Steve decided early on that he was getting married in a church or he wasn’t getting married, and Bucky knows better than to fight with him when he digs in his heels. It isn’t the religious aspect that matters to Steve, anyway; it’s the fact that no church would have married them in 1945, and it’s important to him to make a statement about the two of them having as much right to declare their love to the world as anybody. Bucky is pretty sure his Lutheran _and_ his Jewish grandmother’s angry ghosts would rise from the grave if he got married under a crucifix, though, so he put _nondenominational venue_ on his list of dealbreakers and made it Natasha’s problem. Turns out there’s a Unitarian chapel in Brooklyn, just a few blocks from where Steve grew up: no overt religious symbols, but she’s filled it up with flowers, and he definitely doesn’t tear up at all when he sees that there are yellow roses tucked into the blue and purple bouquets. Bucky could otherwise give a shit about the flowers, but those were his mom’s favorite, and it makes him sharply aware of what Steve meant about the people who he won’t see today.

Still, even though he said he didn’t want a big wedding, he’s a little bit blown away by the number of people who did show up for this. Peeking out around the doorway while Nat, Bruce, and Tony line up on Steve’s side of the little altar and Becca, Clint, and Sam take their places on his, he tries to pick the most important people out of the crowd: his two younger sisters and a few selected aunts and cousins; Claire, who might as well be family at this point, sitting next to Foggy Nelson; Hill, May, and Simmons sitting with a tight little knot of other S.H.I.E.L.D. survivors, including Steve’s buddy Kate _—_ her real name is Sharon, apparently _—_ and even somebody lurking in the back row who he strongly suspects is Nick Fury, although Bucky can’t get a good look at him, the mysterious bastard.

Bucky swallows hard and blinks a couple of times as he turns back to the entryway, because he’s promised himself he’s getting through today without getting all fucking weepy about the whole thing. And then Steve is in front of him and that plan goes right out the window.

Steve looks so good it’s ridiculous. Almost two months after getting pulled out of the Potomac, he’s still paler and more hollow-cheeked than Bucky would like, but he looks more content _—_ more at peace, maybe _—_ than Bucky has ever seen him. He’s lost that trace of a haunted look that Bucky didn’t recognize for what it was until it was gone, and he’s looking at Bucky with that little crease in his forehead, that tiny quirked smile that means both _happy_ and _hopeful._ Those are two things that have been too rare on Steve’s face individually up till now, much less together.

Bucky is well aware, thanks to Natasha pounding this part of the proceedings into his head, that he’s supposed to take Steve’s arm and proceed up the aisle in a slow and dignified manner. Fuck that. He moves without thinking, wrapping Steve up in his arms and squeezing him tight. There’s a little collective _aww_ from the audience and Steve’s body shakes against him in a silent little laugh, but here’s the miracle: Bucky doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter how embarrassed he’s going to be about this later, because this is everything he wants in the world, right here.

He’d probably stay that way for a long time, if somebody at the front of the church didn’t choose that moment to clear his throat. “If we could proceed, my friends,” he says, almost apologetically. “I understand we won’t be given cake until this part is over.”

Bucky turns around and stares _—_ not at Thor, who’s standing behind the altar in a perfectly modern suit that looks fucking amazing on him, but at Natasha, standing off to one side. _How?_ he mouths at her, and she gives a nonchalant little shrug. On second thought, Bucky thinks he shouldn’t be surprised; if anybody could get a message through that Thor needed to get his godly ass down to Midgard, it’s Natasha Romanov. Then the music starts up again. Steve loops his arm through Bucky’s and gives him a little tug, and Bucky obediently lets himself be walked down the aisle.

“Okay, I gotta ask, though,” he says when they reach the altar, leaning in toward Thor and lowering his voice. “Is it legal in the state of New York to get married by an Asgardian prince?”

“Of course,” Thor says, clearly baffled by the question. “Anyone can get ordained on the internet.”

It’s a good thing Bucky has already sacrificed his dignity today, because after that he’s pretty much too busy not laughing, much less watching Steve try not to crack up, to hear the rest of the ceremony. Both of them have mostly gotten their shit together by the time Thor tells them to kiss, though, so it all works out.

 

“Okay, so that was incredible and wonderful and probably the best day of my life,” Bucky declares, when they’re finally, _finally_ heading out of the reception hall, “but is it okay that right now, I’m pretty sure I never want to see another human being again?”

“Well, it’s not exactly what I was hoping to hear from my husband on our wedding night,” Steve tells him dryly.

“Nobody besides you, obviously, dumbass. I _love_ you, but, shit, I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired before in my whole life.”

“That’s not much of an improvement.”

“My jaw still hurts from smiling for all those pictures. It’s gonna be days before I can open my mouth the whole way again.”

“Now you’re doing it on purpose. You know we got off easy, right? Thor says Asgardian weddings can last for weeks at a time.”

“Thank fuck we’re human, then. The rest of them can party as long as they want, but I’m beat.” Bucky pulls Steve into his arms and kisses him again, then winces theatrically. “Ow. Yeah, that’s definitely a TMJ injury.”

“You’re Captain America. Walk it off,” Steve orders, grabbing Bucky by the shoulders and pulling him back to the steps that lead down from the reception hall. When he stands on the bottom stair while Bucky’s on the sidewalk, it doesn’t completely erase the height difference, but it certainly makes the next kiss easier. “God, I love you,” he says.

Bucky cups Steve’s cheek in the palm of his right hand. “I love you too, Steven Grant Rogers.”

“Wow. You’d think my husband could at least get my name right.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I put in the paperwork to change it. Well, Jarvis did, really. I’m Steven R. Barnes from now on. And don’t even think about changing yours,” he adds, as Bucky opens his mouth. “We already established that Buck Rogers is out of the question.”

“I could hyphenate it,” Bucky offers, weakly. He wasn’t expecting this. “I mean, Steve, your name was pretty much all you had left of your family.”

“That’s the point, dummy. You’re my family now. Besides, this way we don’t have to figure out what to call the kids.”

“What, are you gonna tell me you’re pregnant?”

“No, but Laura Barton is.”

“No shit! Really?”

“Educated guess, but she wasn’t drinking, and that looked like a baby bump under her dress to me.”

Bucky grins. He’s never getting over the fact that Steve is finally, grudgingly, picking up modern slang. “Wow, Clint sure didn’t waste any time, did he? I wonder what that’s gonna do to their whole long-distance thing. I couldn’t do what they do even without kids in the picture.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing you don’t have to.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, with a contented sigh. “Was today everything you wanted, Stevie?”

“Yes,” Steve says, half a second too quickly.

Bucky sighs again, less happily this time. “This close, Stevie,” he says. “You were _this_ close to finally telling a convincing lie.”

“Bucky, I don’t want us to fight about this,” Steve says, immediately defensive. “I love _you._ I married _you._ It has nothing to do with _—_ ”

“I’m not trying to start a fight,” Bucky says, and he really isn’t. “I’m trying to tell you that you can say it, Stevie, it’s okay. There were parts of today that were kind of rough on me too, and I’m not gonna be mad or jealous or anything if you were thinking about how she should’ve been there. Just don’t go back to doing the thing where you think you have to carry everything yourself and spare the rest of us, because that really sucks for the people who love you.”

Steve sighs. “Part of me was hoping she’d just... show up,” he admits. “She used to do that sometimes. I’d look up, and she’d be there, and I’d know everything was okay.”

“I know,” Bucky says. “It would’ve been pretty awkward if she had, though, considering you and me weren’t even the only people there who she’d beaten the shit out of.”

“I know. It’s probably for the best. I just… I’m worried about her, Buck. I know it’s not fair that it’s our wedding day and I’m thinking about someone else, but she’s probably out there alone and scared and thinking she doesn’t have anyone she can turn to. And what if she doesn’t have food, or a safe place to sleep? A woman on her own like that, some guys might think… It’s not like she can’t defend herself, but she shouldn’t have to.”

“If she wanted to find us, she’d find us, Stevie. I mean, we live in a building with an Avengers logo you can practically see from space.”

“I know. I just wish I could help her.”

“Me too, bae. And I know it’s gonna sound really dumb if I say we gotta give it time or have faith or any of that stuff, because people used to say that about my arm, and I can tell you that shit is the opposite of helpful. But the truth is, she probably is gonna have to come to us, and from what you’ve told me about her, she won’t do that until she’s good and ready.”

“I know,” Steve says. “Do you forgive me if today was only ninety-nine percent perfect, then?”

“Ninety-nine percent is more than most people get,” Bucky says. “So do you wanna call a cab to take us to the hotel, or what?”

“Go around the corner,” Steve says, grinning. “I’ve got another surprise for you.”

 

 _“How,”_ Bucky says, when he sees the motorcycle: definitely his Indian, he recognizes the TARDIS-blue custom paint job and the one little ding in the back fender, but it’s all in one piece and gleaming like it’s just rolled off the showroom floor. “I didn’t think it would sit in that parking lot for fifteen minutes before somebody jacked it and sold it for scrap.”

“Turns out the S.H.I.E.L.D. team that was after us found it and stuck in an evidence locker,” Steve says. “Getting it out wasn’t easy, either. Everything that belonged to S.H.I.E.L.D. went into lockdown after the Triskelion, but Jarvis managed to track down a tech who used to work there. Had to do some fast talking to get it released, but, you know, it really helps when you can name-drop Captain America.”

Bucky strokes the brand new helmet hung over one handlebar, only half-believing the bike is really there, then turns and wraps Steve in another crushing hug. “Thanks, Stevie.”

“Just be careful on it,” Steve says, holding the key up between them. “No more high-speed chases.”

“I solemnly swear not to fight Hydra while operating this vehicle,” Bucky says. “I may, however, take my husband to a really swanky hotel and fuck his brains out.”

“I thought you were tired.”

“I got my second wind.” Bucky swings his leg over the bike and pats the seat behind him, and Steve, grinning, hops up behind him and locks his arms around Bucky’s waist. Bucky gives the engine a couple of revs, less for the noise than so that he can take a few extra seconds to feel the comforting weight of Steve’s body pressed up against his, before he puts the bike in gear and pulls out into the street.

After the two of them vanish around a corner, Peggy Carter waits, silently counting to fifty before she drops down from her perch on the opposite rooftop and disappears into the shadows again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peeps who are still here for this fic, I freaking love you. Thanks for being patient while I wrote my Stucky Big Bang entry ([it's this one here,](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11642877/chapters/26189424) speaking of shameless self-promotion, but [look at the art](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11873487) first, because SulaSafeRoom is amazeballs). And in return for your kind words and encouragement through _that_ process, I've returned to this fic with some of the most self-indulgent crap I've ever written, so I hope anybody besides me will enjoy it.
> 
> Beta reader extraordinaire Robyngoodfellow said it was okay to end the chapter here. :) She also continues to put up with my yelling about plot points and save you all from many typos, so it's truly unfair of me to throw her under the cliffhanger bus. ♥
> 
> Trivia: the reason you don't get to hear the vows is because they're the most generic ones Natasha could come up with. That's because Bucky's very first dealbreaker was, "Fuck no, we're not writing our own. I've heard the inspirational shit Steve comes up with off the top of his head and I'm _not_ gonna compete with him when he's actually trying."


	17. The Weekend of Ultron

Bucky has yet to find anything in his life that he likes better than just spending time with Steve in their very own apartment, when they’re both safe and warm and don’t have anyplace to be, but he’ll admit that opening up a can of whoop-ass on Nazis is a pretty good reason to go outdoors now and again.

The Avengers are storming a Hydra stronghold in Sokovia. It’s one of those little countries that sprang up overnight when the Soviet Union went boom, and even Bucky, who’s pretty familiar with eastern Europe, wasn’t familiar with this one. Its capital city spent centuries getting traded back and forth among larger countries according to who had the biggest guns that week, and its current independence comes at the price of rigged elections and a blatantly corrupt police force. In retrospect, it’s the perfect place for Hydra to set up shop. No wonder Pierce quit bankrolling the Winter Soldier project: in the U.S. Army you’ve got records and bureaucracy out the ass, but here, slip the right bribes to the right people and nobody looks twice if you’re disappearing citizens to use them in your bullshit super-soldier experiments. So yeah, even if it wasn’t for the whole attempted assassination angle, Bucky would be taking this mission a little fuckin’ personally.

The best news of all, though, is that Steve cooked up a plan to hit the fortress from all sides to spread the Hydra forces out as thin as possible, which means Bucky gets to make his entrance on a motorcycle. Not his beloved Indian, of course, but the all-terrain thing Tony souped up in his lab is still pretty great. Of course, Tony and Sam get to _fly_ in, but Clint and Nat get a plain old truck, Steve is stuck in the command vehicle a mile from the action, and poor Bruce Hulked out as soon as the shooting started, so Bucky guesses he has to be happy with making the third most awesome entrance to this party.

“Shit!” Tony yelps over the comms, and Bucky, who’s busy bashing Hydra fighters with his shield as he zips past, takes it back: whatever the _clunk_ was that preceded that, it probably means Tony’s going home with a few nasty flying-related bruises tonight.

“Language,” Steve says, such an ancient joke by now that Bucky doesn’t even bother to roll his eyes anymore. “Jarvis, what’s the view from upstairs?”

“The central building is protected by an energy shield,” Jarvis informs them. “Strucker's technology is well beyond any other Hydra base we've taken.”

“Loki's scepter must be here,” Thor chimes in. “Strucker couldn't mount this defense without it.”

Shit. Bucky keeps forgetting that Thor can also fly. Okay, fine, make the motorcycle the _fourth_ coolest entrance.

A burst of gunfire sounds from somewhere off to the east, and Natasha grunts. “At long last is lasting a little long, boys,” she says.”

“I think we lost the element of surprise,” Clint agrees.

“Wait a second,” Tony says, while Bucky spins the bike in a one-eighty and whips the shield at one of the straggling Hydra soldiers who’s somehow still on his feet. “Is nobody else going to deal with the elephant in the room?”

“What, Tony?” Steve asks.

“What I want to know, O fearless leader, is _what_ is going on with your loving husband’s face right now?”

“Aw, shit,” Bucky mutters. “I got incoming, gimme a sec.” He swears he’s not doing this just to change the subject, but there’s an armored truck bearing down on him and he can’t outrun it. He screeches the bike into a painfully tight turn, then tries out a maneuver that’s either going to look amazing or end in tears: he slides off the bike without letting go of the handlebars, braces his feet, and uses its own momentum to send it flying straight through the truck’s windshield while he spins out of the way, ducking off to one side as the truck flips onto its roof. Damn, that was cool. Why can he never pull off a stunt like that when the rest of the team is watching? “You got a problem with my makeup job, Tony?” he says, turning his attention back to more important matters.

“Hey, I’m not questioning your life choices, Cap’n Jack Sparrow, I’m just wondering why you decided this was the mission to get all dolled up for.”

“It’s not _for_ the miss—oh, fuck, hang on,” Bucky says. One of the Hydra assholes has escaped the crash and decided to go hand-to-hand with him; Bucky kneecaps him with the edge of the shield, which will take the fight out of pretty much anybody, and slots it into its magnetic harness before continuing, “It wasn’t for the mission, it was for date night. It came to my attention that Steve had never heard of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

 _“What?”_ Tony actually squeals, loudly enough that Bucky winces at the feedback over the comms. “Barnes, if you tell me you put on a red wig and a French maid outfit, I’ll admit that I was wrong and there is a God.”

“Sorry, Tones, but I promised the PR team I wouldn’t compromise my shiny Captain America image _too_ much. Which is a shame,” Bucky says, as he starts uphill toward the fortress, “because let me tell you, I look fuckin’ great in a bustier. Steve, on the other hand, wouldn’t even let me put eyeshadow on him, because he has a giant stick up his ass.”

“The question isn’t what did he _wear,_ the question is what did he _think,”_ Sam chimes in, from somewhere above them. “Because this is one hot take I’ve gotta hear.”

“Kids these days think they invented drag shows,” Steve says dryly. “We used to have ’em on the Army bases, you know. It made me glad I was frozen through the 1970s, though.”

“Probably should’ve warned you it wasn’t all Marvin Gaye back then,” Sam admits.

“No, it wasn’t. And for the record, Buck, it’s not as if I’ve never worn makeup before. I wouldn’t let you put any on me because your color choices were horrible.” There’s a universal moment of startled silence after that, and Steve sighs. “Stage show? Chorus girls? That awful movie in ‘43? How is anyone still surprised by this? Anyway, _someone_ got home from a midnight show and fell asleep with liquid eyeliner on, and here we are. Now, could we get back to fighting evil today?”

“Right. Evil. Got it,” Tony says, and then Bucky runs into another little cluster of Hydra guards and has to deal with that for a while. He’s just about cleared up that little problem when he hears Natasha say, “Clint!” in a tone that gets everybody’s attention. If Natasha is alarmed, that usually means shit has gone seriously sideways.

“What ha—” he’s starting to say, when something zips past him so fast that it knocks him off his feet.

“Fuck,” he says softly, and then, “Stevie. I think we have an enhanced in the field.”

“Clint’s hurt,” Natasha says, and Bucky’s stomach drops even further.

“Bruce, get in there and deal with that bunker,” Steve orders. Up in the C&C vehicle, he’s got maps and topographical scans of the whole area, each Avenger’s position a different-colored marker on an array of screens; he’ll already be alerting the medevac vehicles that stayed back on the main road. “Tony, hurry up with that entry point. Buck, report on the enhanced.”

“Moving too fast to be a regular human, that’s all I can tell you,” Bucky says, as Thor, the big showoff, zips through the air overhead. “Never seen anybody move like that. Fuck, still haven’t. I dunno if it’s bio or tech, but he—I’m guessing he—was pretty much a motion blur.”

“With Hydra, it could be either,” Steve says grimly. “Nat, looks like the bunker’s down, so I’m bringing the truck to you. Thor, head north and cover us.”

“Steve,” Bucky begins, but he gives up on the idea of arguing almost as soon as he has it. He knew this was going to happen the minute Steve started talking about paramedic training, didn’t he? At least the team unanimously rose up in rebellion and made him start wearing a uniform that approximates body armor. Gritting his teeth, he asks, “You got orders for me?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Cover Tony’s six. Help him find the scepter.”

Of all the things Bucky would’ve preferred not to hear, an order to go further away from Steve is high on the list, but he’s a soldier, so he says, “Wilco. Tones, I’m headed your way.”

“Can’t wait to see you, Creature of the Night,” Tony says, before turning his attention back to whatever he’s doing.

Bucky sighs. Sometimes he swears Tony sits down and studies pop culture just in case he needs fresh nicknames. He moves in through the front door, taking down a couple more Hydra grunts with the shield in the—entryway? Courtyard? Do castles have foyers? Whatever it is, it’s quieter after he’s done with it—and heads for what he’s guessing, from the floor plans they went over on the way here, is Hydra mission control. It’s satisfying to be right: Strucker is there, and Bucky makes short work of his last couple of guards and grabs Strucker by the throat without giving him a chance to do the typical Hydra snark-and-threatening thing. “Where’s the scepter?” he demands.

“Don’t worry,” Strucker says, in a heavy German accent. Jeez, could he be any more of a bad guy cliché? He’s got a _monocle,_ for fuck’s sake. “I know when I’m beaten. You’ll mention how I cooperated, I hope.”

“Yeah, I’ll be sure to tell the U.N. tribunal that you were a _helpful_ fascist asshole. Look, pal, I had no patience for Nazis before a bunch of you came at me in an elevator. Now, I’m not gonna ask again: where’s the fuckin’ scepter?”

Which is when Bucky’s entire world explodes in pain.

His first instinct is to clap his hands over his ears, but that doesn’t work, because the screeching metal noise is coming from inside his own head. He drops Strucker and goes down on his knees, and when he looks up, he sees a slender female form retreating through a doorway. “Shit, we got a second enhanced,” he gasps over the comms, while Strucker takes on an unbearably smug look.

“You’ll have to be faster than that if you want to defeat the twins, Capt—” is as far as he gets before Bucky spins the shield up and bashes him in the face with it.

Strucker crumples, and Bucky clenches his jaw and waits for the walls to stop spinning before he he reaches for the zip-tie restraints in one of his belt pouches. “Guys, I got Strucker,” he announces.

“Yeah,” says Tony, “I got… something bigger.”

“What is it, Tones?” Bucky asks, and then, when Tony doesn’t answer, _“Shit.”_ He leaves Strucker secured to one of the lab tables—poetic justice, in his opinion—and goes exploring.

Tony continues ignoring his hails, which pisses Bucky off to no end, because going off comms in the middle of an op is a fuckin’ undisciplined civvie behavior that he ought to be beyond by now, but at least he isn’t hard to find: Bucky pretty much follows the trail of scorch marks. “Hey, secret passage,” he says, when he comes to the door Tony has pushed aside. “Bitchin’. Stark, your ass better not be dead down there or I’m gonna be really annoyed with y—mother _fucker!”_

It’s a space whale. It’s one of the fucking space whales. How the fuck did it get all the way to Sokovia? S.H.I.E.L.D. was supposed to have cleaned all of those up and locked them away somewh— _oh,_ Bucky thinks, _right._ The thing looks pretty thoroughly dead, though, hanging limp and motionless from the ceiling and severed at a couple different points along what passes for its spine. And Tony is standing in front of it, with one of his suit’s gauntlets on and Loki’s scepter in his armor-plated hand.

“Tony,” Bucky says, loudly, and Tony turns.

“Got the thing, Barnes,” he says, and Bucky frowns. He just handed Tony a whole cultural phenomenon’s worth of nicknames, and he’s not using them? That’s weird.

“You okay?” he asks. “How come you’re not in the suit?”

“Oh. Set it to sentry mode.” Tony whistles, and the empty suit comes clanking over like some kind of weird-ass dog. “We’re gonna be sorting this mess out for a while.”

“No shit,” Bucky says, giving the space whale another glance. It’s been almost two years since the Battle of New York, and while it’s not exactly PTSD levels of bad, Chitauri stuff still skeeves him out. He can only imagine how Tony feels about this, which makes it doubly weird that he took off the suit. He silences the comms, just for a second—it’s not civvie bullshit if it’s him doing it, right?—and repeats, “Are you okay, Tones?”

“Yeah.” Tony answers too quickly, but then, Tony usually does. “Don’t toucha-toucha-touch anything, Janet. Jarvis has about finished his download, so let’s get the glowstick of destiny out of here and send in the ’bots for cleanup duty.”

Okay, that’s more like it. Bucky nods and heads back upstairs to retrieve Strucker. Once they get Clint to med bay, maybe there’ll be time to stop on the way home for some makeup remover.

 

Clint’s wound isn’t life-threatening, but it’s painful and ugly and if it’d been three inches up and to the right, then Steve would be making a very difficult phone call to Laura right about now. It’s not the first near-miss the Avengers have had, but it doesn’t have to be life-threatening to take Steve back to the day Peggy fell from the train. For him, that was the day the war stopped being about standing up to a bully and became about destroying Hydra in the loudest, messiest, most vengeful way possible. When he found out Peggy wasn’t dead, he’d hoped that maybe his brain would give him a break from the aching post-mission flashbacks of her hand reaching out toward him as she falls. But it turns out it doesn’t really make any difference.

He deals with it the way he always has: by reviewing today’s mission in his head, turning it this way and that and visualizing every angle until it turns into a clinical, impersonal series of events, then looking at those with an eye toward what he could’ve done better. Bucky and Sam, on the other hand, spend most of the flight home giving Clint shit about what they insist is the medical equivalent of a chipped nail. Steve doesn’t put a stop to it because it’s probably helpful to Clint in the long run: if they were gentle with him, he’d know he was in trouble, but if they’re being assholes, things must be okay. Besides, Steve is well aware of the healing powers of spite.

He’s moved on to doodling in his notebook, keeping one eye on the vital signs monitor, by the time they reach American airspace and Tony stands up from the pilot seat. Steve watches him wander to the back of the plane and stare down at the scepter for a long moment. Thor is sitting next to it, keeping an eye on it as if he doesn’t quite trust it not to vanish.

“Feels good, yeah?” Tony asks him. “I mean, you’ve been after this thing since S.H.I.E.L.D. collapsed. Not that I haven’t enjoyed our little raiding parties.”

“No, but this… this brings it to a close,” Thor agrees.

“We should find out what else it’s been used for,” Steve points out. “For one thing, since when is Strucker capable of human experimentation?”

“Banner and I will give it the once-over before it goes back to Asgard,” Tony says. “I mean, just until the farewell party. You’re staying, right?”

Thor nods. “Yes, of course. A victory should be honored with revels.”

“Yeah,” Tony says. “Who doesn’t love revels. Right, boss?”

Steve allows himself a smile. “Hopefully this puts an end to both the Chitauri and Hydra, so, yes. Revels.”

The jet is coming in for a landing, so Tony takes the helm again, and Steve goes back to his little cartoon doodle of a figure that might or might not be Clint in what might or might not be a Dumpster, with stars and wiggly lines indicating pain and a speech bubble that says “I’m fine, just get me a Starbucks.” He shields it with his hand when they wheel Clint past him on a medical gurney, figuring the guy who’s just been shot will appreciate it more once he’s on the mend, but Bucky looks at it and laughs as he plops down beside him.

“That’s Barton, all right. Dr. Cho says you did good getting him stabilized, by the way. Said you made her job a hell of a lot easier. This team paramedic thing is working out good.” He holds out his datapad. “Maria said to tell you she and Jarvis looked at the new files, and she’s got a tentative ID on the two enhanced. You ready?”

“Yeah.” Steve takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. “Take me through it.” He could read it faster himself, but he wants to hear Bucky’s voice.

“Right.” Bucky taps the datapad and pulls up a pair of images: a young man with bleached hair and a wide-eyed brunette woman. “Wanda and Pietro Maximoff,” he reads. “Oh, hey, Strucker wasn’t kidding, they’re actually twins. Yep, that’s the girl I saw, all right.”

“Their abilities?”

“He’s fast and she’s weird,” Bucky says. Steve opens his eyes to give him a withering look, and he elaborates, “No, really, he’s got a super-speed thing and she’s got something called neuroelectric interfacing and—telekinesis? Fucking _really?_ Okay, so they’re a pair of Sokovian orphans, lost their folks in the last war, went into the system…” Bucky stops abruptly and says, very softly, “Fuck.”

“What?”

“Their mom was Romani and their dad was Jewish.” Bucky takes a deep breath. “And they volunteered to work for a Nazi organization? That… that is deeply, _deeply_ fucked up.”

“We don’t know enough to judge them, Buck. It’s not like Hydra was advertising when this whole thing started. There’s a good chance they didn’t know who they were signing on with.” When Bucky takes a deep breath to fire back, Steve drops the argument-ending bombshell: “You didn’t.”

Bucky freezes, and his eyes go blank. Then he takes a long, slow breath and says, “Goddammit, Stevie, I hate it when you’re right.”

“I’m not saying it isn’t fucked up,” Steve says. “I guess I’m just inclined to sympathize with kids who let a German scientist experiment on them because they want to fight for their country. Having someone abuse that sacrifice… it has to be a living hell.”

Bucky’s shoulders slump. “Fucking Hydra,” he says.

“Fucking Hydra,” Steve agrees grimly. “Whatever their motivation is, my gut says we haven’t seen the last of the Maximoff twins.”

“Nothing can ever be easy,” Bucky mutters. “As if we weren’t already busy enough looking for…”

“Yeah,” Steve says. Neither of them wants to mention Peggy’s name around the others, and Steve certainly doesn’t want to mention that with every Hydra base they knock over, he hopes for a clue—a file, a map, the words _Margaret E. Carter Lives, You Bloody Bastards_ in four-foot-tall flaming letters burned into a Hydra lawn—and doesn’t find it. He shakes his head ruefully and says, “It really is like looking for a ghost.”

“You know, we might have more luck if we asked for help. Having Jarvis scan the Hydra files is great and all, but Tony might come up with a search parameter we missed or—”

“No,” Steve says.

Bucky heaves a sigh, but he doesn’t argue. “So, Nat says she has something that’ll get this gunk off my face, and then I’m gonna take the world’s longest shower, and then I think I’ll head up to the lab and see if Tony has a second to look at my arm. Think I wrenched something when I threw that motorcycle.”

“Yeah, I was watching you on the surveillance drone feed,” Steve says. “You do know that was an incredibly stupid idea, right?”

Bucky breaks into his first genuine smile in hours and leans over to kiss Steve’s forehead as he gets up. “Love you too, bae,” he says, and Steve grins after him as he walks away.

 

Bucky shows up in the lab sporting a clean face, wet hair, a six-pack of beer, and a black tank top for easy access to his arm. He walks into a beehive of activity: Bruce is pacing and occasionally scribbling on his tablet and Tony has his holographic displays throwing gridlines and calculations all over the place. “Hey, science bro party,” he says, thunking the beer down on an unoccupied table. “I figured you guys would be taking the night off from the heavy-duty stuff. You know, we did kind of save the world and all.”

“Oh, hey, Guyliner,” Tony says. “Yeah, we’re gonna be pulling an all-nighter working with the staff, but I’ve always got time for my favorite American icon. Whattaya need?”

“Working with the staff?” Bucky blinks, then looks again at the holograms. One of them looks like an MRI of the jewel, and the projection out of _that_ projection looks weirdly like a brain. “Are you looking at what Strucker might’ve done with it?”

“Better,” Tony says. “Strucker was a hack. He was using a quantum computer to play Oregon Trail. What _we’re_ going to do with it is create a truly independent artificial intelligence.”

Bucky gives Tony a long look. There’s something a little more intense than usual about him today. “What’s wrong with Jarvis?”

“Nothing’s wrong with Jarvis, but he’s a learning AI. This is the next level up: a _creative_ AI. This is the thing that runs security for the planet. This is what makes the Avengers obsolete.”

“So instead of figuring out what that thing did to Strucker’s lab experiments like you promised, you’re down here creating Skynet?” Bucky says, in disbelief.

“It’s not like that, Bucky,” Bruce begins.

“Really? Explain to me how it’s different, then. Because it kinda sounds like you two are taking something that _Thor_ thinks is incredibly dangerous and dicking around with it.”

“Look, without getting into the math—” Tony begins.

“Don’t start with that ‘you mere mortals couldn’t possibly understand’ stuff, Tones. I know I’m not a playboy genius philanthropist whatever, but do you know what they teach you in sniper school? Fuckin’ math is what. If you can’t explain it in a way I’ll understand, it means you don’t want to. C’mon, Bruce,” he says, “are you really telling me you don’t have any reservations about finding alien technology and poking it with a stick?”

“Of course I have reservations,” Bruce says. “But Tony is right, Bucky. In the last three years, aliens have visited this planet at least twice, and both times involved human casualties. Tony is talking about protection on a larger scale than the Iron Legion—”

“The Iron Legion? You mean your security robots? Tony, are you building an _army of killer robots?”_

“See, this is why I didn’t want to tell anyone,” Tony says. “We don’t have time for a city hall debate.”

“Why not?” Bucky says. “Are we expecting another invasion tomorrow? What’s so urgent that you can’t talk to the Asgardian who’s literally upstairs? Hell, I’ll get the whole gang down here and you can tell everybody why you’re the only one qualified to make decisions about the alien disco stick.”

“Barnes, I don’t want to argue about this. We don’t have time to argue about this,” Tony begins, and then, as Bucky pulls out his phone and starts texting, “Come on, don’t bring Patriot Pants into this. You know how he gets.”

“I know how _you_ get,” Bucky snaps. “You’ve been weird since we came up out of that basement. I should’ve seen it earlier. Can you look me in the eye and tell me you’d be in this much of a hurry if I hadn’t found you standing under a space whale seven hours ago?”

“Don’t psychoanalyze me,” Tony says, heated. “We’ve been talking about the need for Ultron for years.”

“Ultron? It has a name and the name is _Ultron?”_ There’s a _crack;_ Bucky’s phone screen has split down the middle under the pressure of his metal hand. “I don’t have to be a genius to know a thing named Ultron is gonna be evil as balls.”

“Listen,” Tony says, and now he’s really angry. “Do you happen to remember the time I carried a nuke through a wormhole, saved New York City?”

“Uh, Tony, this may not be the time,” Bruce begins, but Tony ignores him.

“Recall that?” he demands, pointing upward. “A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space right up there. We're standing three hundred feet below it. We can bust Hydra cells all the livelong day, but that, up there? That's the end game. How were you planning on beating that?”

“You mean the next batch of aliens? I dunno,” Bucky says. “And thanks for my impending panic attack about that, by the way. But building machines to be a planetary police force—have you forgotten who _else_ thought that was a good idea, just a couple months ago?” Tony looks at him in shock, and Bucky goes on: “Okay, Tones, let’s say you do build a robot army. How do you plan to keep it from falling into the wrong hands? That’s how your whole Iron Man thing started in the first place.”

Putting Tony on the defensive is always a mistake. “I think that’s working out okay for the planet so far!”

“Yeah, because at some point you stopped and thought it through, put a hell of a lot of safeguards in the armor so nobody can use it but you. I’m not saying don’t explore the options, but I _am_ saying don’t decide to hand over planetary security to the evil space brain just because you’re in panic mode. Hell, build all the robots you want, but let Jarvis run ’em. At least he remembers to put in the three laws of robotics.”

“Admittedly, I do take a rather flexible approach to them, sir,” Jarvis interjects. “I take it your problem is less with the concept of artificial intelligence as a whole and more with the staff as the source.”

“Fuckin’ A, buddy.” Bucky would fistbump Jarvis if he had a corporeal body. “Did you forget what that thing did to Clint, who’s downstairs getting new skin because he put his ass on the line for this team today? And yeah, I know you’re gonna say that’s why we need it, so we don’t have to fight bad guys anymore. Hell, nobody would like that more than me. But a mind-control device isn’t the way. I’m not taking any chances on you ending up like—”

“Like who?” Tony says. When he doesn’t get an answer, he repeats it: _“Like who, Barnes?”_

It takes Bucky an extra second or two to answer, because he’s busy mentally scrabbling back from the slippery slope he almost went down. He turns to Bruce instead. “Banner,” he says, “I know Tony’s your best friend and you don’t want to say no to him after everything he’s done for you, but if you really care about him, you’ll stop this right now before he fucks with something that fucks him right back.”

“That’s an image,” Bruce says, eyebrows arched so high that they’re practically disappearing under his hair. “He’s got a point, Tony. The staff is—”

Bruce stops abruptly, because Tony is laughing. It’s high-pitched and a little hysterical, and they both turn and stare at him. “You think this is funny?” Bucky demands.

“No?” Tony says, still laughing. “It’s probably not, right? It’s… potentially very terrible? But you know what, it _is_ funny,” he says, voice changing, eyes darkening. “It’s hilarious that you don’t see that the last two years are _exactly_ why we need Ultron. It’s _fucking hysterical_ that you don’t understand that I’m doing this because _I can’t protect you._ There’s a whole fragile blue world out there that could come under attack at any second from any part of the universe, and me? This brain, one flesh body in a suit of armor, and a handful of robots that can just about make toast on a good day? It’s _not enough._ So forgive me for trying to do the right thing here, because we all know that the next time shit goes down, it’s gonna be my fault because I didn’t do more.”

There’s a moment of silence, and Tony is just opening his mouth again—presumably, Bucky thinks, to deliver one last snappy line before he flounces off—when Steve, in the lab doorway, says, “Is that really what you think, Tony? That it’s your job to protect the entire planet?”

Tony looks at him bleakly, and Bucky realizes: this is what he’s afraid of. It’s not aliens; it’s not losing the fight for the planet. He’s afraid of letting down the team. Bucky’s heart breaks a little bit for him in that moment. “If I don’t do it, then who will?” Tony challenges, but with no real heart in it. “Huh? Who?”

“All of us,” Steve says. “Together. As a team.”

“Oh, spare me the Care Bear Stare, Rogers. We’re not going to win this one through the magic of friendship.”

“Then we’ll lose together, too,” Steve says. “But it isn’t Plan A. And neither is you taking this whole thing on yourself. Because you’re right, Tony—you’re not just critical to this team. The whole world needs you. And we don’t have the luxury of letting you burn yourself out.”

Tony looks less certain, now—still angry, God yes, but less strident. “Rogers, I don’t think you’re hearing what I’m—”

“Take a day,” Steve says. It’s his “I used to be Captain America, maybe you’ve heard of me” voice, with the weight of seventy years of patriotic propaganda behind it, and while he doesn’t bring it out often these days, it leaves no room for argument when he does. “Get out of the lab and go for a walk. Call Pepper. Eat something that isn’t a protein bar. Read a book. Crash a museum field trip and lecture a bunch of kids about something way beyond their grade level. Sit in the Park and be bored for half an hour.”

“Watch the fucking Cybermen episodes of Doctor Who,” Bucky mutters.

“But do something that isn’t Avengers-related,” Steve concludes, ignoring Bucky’s aside. “And then come back tomorrow, look at all this with fresh eyes, and if you still think this is a thing you have to do, we’ll talk. But the alternative is that you put on the suit and fight me for the staff, because that’s the only way I’m letting this go.”

Tony stares at him for what feels like a century. Then, abruptly, he breaks it off and throws his hands in the air. “You know what, Rogers?” he says. “I will take a day. But this makes it your fault,” he adds sharply. “Your fault if the next convoy of aliens to roll up decides this planet is their new shootin’ gallery.”

Steve squares his thin shoulders, as if he’s ready to physically take on responsibility for that outcome. “Okay,” he says.

Tony holds his gaze for a moment longer. Then he walks out through the lab door, slamming it behind him.

The moment he’s gone, Bucky turns around and throws a left-handed punch at the steel worktable before he remembers that Bruce’s nerves are probably also pretty near the breaking point. “Sorry,” he says sheepishly. “Arm malfunction.”

“You should get that looked at,” Bruce deadpans.

“He bullies you sometimes,” Bucky says. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Right, because I’ve never stumbled into any sketchy science on my own,” Bruce says ruefully. “Tony is just… he’s Tony. It’s easy to get caught up in his energy. And you’re right that it’s hard to say no, considering I only get to have a life in this city because of him, but I can’t blame him for being too kind. He really is trying. He just has a blind spot where his own technology is concerned.”

“He has hubris out the ass, is what he has,” Bucky mutters.

“Buck,” Steve says reproachfully, taking him by the arm. “Come on.”

“Are you going to tell Thor?” Bruce asks.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “It’s too dangerous not to.”

“Do you mean you think the staff was—affecting Tony?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says. “Nothing he’s done is exactly against type, but something feels off. I’ll talk to Thor. Lock the staff up before you leave, would you? No, wait,” he says, as Bruce moves toward it. “Bucky. Use your left hand. Pick it up and put it in that storage locker. And set a combination nobody knows but you.”

Now it’s Bucky’s turn to raise an eyebrow at him, but he curls his metal fingers around the staff, places it in the locker as directed, shuts it, and punches in Becca’s birthday. He walks out, Bruce following, and Steve pulls the door shut behind them.

Steve waits until Bruce gets off the elevator, and they’re on their way back to the seventy-sixth floor, to say, “Were we too hard on Tony back there?”

“Nope,” Bucky says. “No murderbots in this tower on my watch.” He pauses. “Steve, why’d you ask me to lock up the staff?”

“Because I know the codes to the lab doors,” Steve says. Bucky tilts his head and looks at him, and he explains, “I had this thought that if the staff can mind-control someone, maybe it could do the opposite.”

“Peggy,” Bucky says, understanding. “In case she’s still… not all the way back.”

“If I believed it could help her, I’d never let Thor take it back to Asgard,” Steve confirms. “That’s why it has to be locked up. So nobody does anything stupid, not just Tony.”

Bucky reaches out and squeezes his hand. “Thanks for having my back.”

“You would’ve handled it fine without me.”

“You’re still a terrible liar, but thanks.” Bucky’s whole body feels drained. He has just about enough energy in one day to fight with either Hydra or Tony, but not both. “What do you say to post-Avenging Chinese takeout and Netflix?”

“Sure. What was that show you wanted me to watch? Battle-galaxy something?”

“Battlestar Galactica?” Bucky says. “Yeah, maybe next time. Let’s put on a Disney movie instead.”

 

Tony is gone for thirty-six hours, and when Jarvis announces that he’s back, Bucky forces himself to slink down to the lab. He has to; his elbow keeps locking up, and at one point he almost hit Steve in the face while he was trying to unstick it. He feels shitty about asking for help after yelling at Tony, though, especially since what seemed obvious in the moment feels a lot less certain when he wakes up at four in the morning, wondering if he’s just prevented Tony from building the thing that would have saved the planet. And while he doesn’t _think_ Tony would do anything petty as payback, he does sort of live in dread of the day the guy decides that putting Captain America into a “stop hitting yourself” situation would be the height of comic relief.

He stops in the lab doorway to brace himself, but then he hears a voice, and the voice isn’t Tony’s. “—Should put something on it for propulsion,” it’s saying, “like a rocket or something.”

“Rocket, huh? How you gonna compensate for the kickback?”

“I dunno, you’re the inventor.”

“Oh, so you’re like, ‘I had one halfway decent idea, now somebody else can do the hard part’? You try pulling that stunt at MIT, see how far it gets you. No, you know what, I take it back, you’re gonna make a great government consultant.” Tony looks up as Bucky rounds the corner into his workspace. “Oh, hey, Barnes. Meet Harley, currently the top contender to replace you as the biggest pain in my ass.”

Harley is sitting on the workbench, swinging his feet, because apparently he’s all of eleven or twelve years old. He’s wearing fraying jeans and a T-shirt and a Stark Industries VIP visitor’s badge, and his eyes get huge when he sees Bucky. “Whoa! You’re Captain America.”

“So they tell me,” Bucky says warily. “Tony, there’s a kid in your lab.”

“Yeah, Harley, I told you,” Tony says. “And no, before you ask, he’s not mine. He’s visiting. Don’t worry, his mom knows where he is. More or less.”

“Do you have your shield?” Harley asks.

“It’s upstairs,” Bucky says warily.

“Can I throw it?”

“Sure,” says Tony.

“No,” says Bucky. “Tony, why is there a kid in your lab?”

“Harley’s here as my consultant,” Tony says. “Brought him in to talk about the Ultron project.”

“And?” Bucky says.

“I asked how he was gonna keep them from turning evil,” Harley says.

“And I promised I wouldn’t do it until I could satisfy _him_ that I wouldn’t overrun his planet with evil machines. So congratulations, Barnes, I remain outvoted. Now, what are you doing here?”

“Oh. Elbow locked up,” Bucky says, giving the metal arm a flex. He’s not totally sure he’s heard the last of this, but he does feel a little of the tension he’s been carrying around evaporate.

“Can I see?” Harley asks, and Bucky obligingly holds it out where the kid can touch it, if he wants. Most kids just want to squeeze the metal fingers, maybe push on the forearm a little, so it’s a surprise when Harley goes, “Wow,” and immediately picks up a screwdriver, which he tries to jam between the plates. “What’s it made of? Does it have a power source or do you have to plug it in?”

Bucky jerks his arm back. “Hey. Rude. You gotta ask before you take people’s limbs apart.”

“Can you feel things with it?”

“Some things.”

“Did you really punch aliens with it?”

“A couple.”

“Did you ever punch the Hulk with it?”

“That’d be dumb. He’s on my side.”

“Like, just to see if you could?”

“I know I _could,_ I just like having all my teeth.”

“It’d be funny, though.”

“Go get us some coffee, Twenty Questions,” Tony says abruptly, and when the kid opens his mouth, “Uh-uh. Coffee first, then you can help me take Cap’s arm apart.”

 _“Yesss,”_ Harley says, hopping down from the table and darting off. Tony watches him critically, and Bucky says, “Why’s the kid really here, Tones?”

“Hope for the future,” Tony says, and when Bucky shoots him a baffled look, he says, “No, I mean it. I told myself Ultron was for them. That I had to protect them. But the truth is, the youth of today, smart sarcastic little bastards like that one? They’re gonna run rings around you and me. So _maybe_ you had a point, and you’re not completely wrong about me not having to solo this.”

“Gee, if only anybody had ever told you that before,” Bucky says.

“I’m admitting I was wrong here, Barnes. Don’t make it a thing. I can be self-aware now and again.”

“Yeah, give yourself credit for twelve percent self-awareness.”

“I deserved that,” Tony says. Then he calls out into the hallway, “Hey, Short Stack, you get lost on the way to the coffee maker or what?” and Bucky grins. They’re gonna be okay after all.

The only problem is that he still can’t tell Tony about—

No, he tells himself firmly. There’s no problem here. His feeling that the staff would’ve caused a disaster is as strong as ever, but it’s clear that the crisis has been averted. There’s no _but._ Everything’s gonna be just fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That time I side-eyed Joss Whedon so hard I gave myself eyestrain. No, really, in this chapter Bucky says nearly everything I've been yelling about since the movie was in theaters. 
> 
> (Also, I've been thinking about Bucky dragging Steve to Rocky Horror practically since I started this series and I don't CARE if nobody thought it was funny but me.)
> 
> (ALSO also: Harley. ♥)
> 
> On a related note, no, _you_ plugged Steve and Bucky into one of those “What’s your season?” makeup websites and yelled when Bucky came up as a Winter.
> 
> You have a Tony Stark cameo in Ms. Marvel to thank for the line, “Don’t tell Patriot Pants.” And thank it I do, frequently.


	18. Worthy

The thing is, it’s a perfect evening, right up until the end.

For all Tony can be a giant armor-clad pain in the ass, he knows how to throw a party. To Bucky, the ingredients for a good social event have been the same since high school: good food and lots of it, a mix of music that sets the mood but isn’t too loud to talk over, a space that’s small enough to conveniently bump into anyone you’re trying to flirt with but big enough to avoid anyone who wants to pin you in a corner and talk about themselves all night, and, of course, copious amounts of alcohol. Okay, his priorities have shifted a little now that he’s 1) a happily married man who 2) has a metabolism that makes it hard to maintain a buzz with anything less than engine solvent, but that just makes it all the sweeter when he slides onto the barstool next to Steve, leans over, and says, “Hey, baby. On a scale of one to America, how free are you tomorrow night?”

“Go home, soldier, you’re drunk,” Steve says dismissively, and then, registering Bucky’s flushed face and bright eyes, “Wait, you _are_ drunk. How’d you manage that? I didn’t think Tony had that much tequila.”

“Let me tell you about my best friend, Thor Odinson,” Bucky says, sweeping his arm grandly and almost knocking over a bottle, which Steve slides out of the way. “And _his_ friend, which the closest thing it translates to in English is Asgardian brandy.”

“You’re drinking space alcohol? Is that safe?”

“Not for standard-issue humans, probably,” Bucky says, “but guess who has two thumbs and a superhuman liver, baby? They still have all the data on me from that time I was in Asgard, and Thor talked to his doctor buddy Eir, and it turns out I can drink like a _god._ Literally.”

“Thor made this a priority of the Asgardian court, did he,” Steve says, bemused.

“Damn straight he did. Thor’s such a good bro, man, no fuckin’ wonder he’s worthy.”

Steve rolls his eyes and shoves a tray of beer bottles at him. “Make your big dumb self useful and carry these to that table over there, if you can walk straight.”

“Where? Wait, you mean the one with the old guys?”

“The veterans,” Steve corrects. “Sam asked Tony if he could invite some people from the Center tonight, and Tony said—”

“Oh, God,” says Bucky. “Lemme guess, it was something like, ‘Make sure you bring the World War II vets, Rogers needs to make some friends his own age.’”

“Pretty much. So we decided to turn the tables and actually do it.” Steve allows himself a tiny smirk. “You should’ve seen Tony’s face when he realized he’d dug his own grave, but, to his credit, he was actually very courteous to the guys. What’s really funny is, it’s been kind of great. People who know my history always want to talk about the war, but these guys remember what it was like before.”

“Hang on, you didn’t tell them—”

“Of course not,” says Steve. “I told them I’m a historian. I’m not, but I am a historical artifact, which is close enough.” The fact that Bucky giggles at that definitively erases any question of whether he’s really drunk, and Steve gives him a shove toward the table, then follows with his own drink in hand.

The vets welcome Steve back to the table with a warmth that suggests this isn’t exactly their first round, either. “Who’s your friend, Barnesy?” asks one old man wearing a hat that says **WW2 VET,** and it takes Bucky a second to remember that they would’ve been introduced to Steve _Barnes_ , and even longer to adjust to the warm squishy feeling that gives him.

“He’s my husband, actually,” Steve says. “That’s not gonna be a problem for anybody here, is it?”

There’s a second of silence—just long enough for Bucky to shoot Steve a look that translates to, _Christ, bae, you know I’m all about Pride, but these guys are all like_ _ninety,_ _is there anyone on this entire_ planet _you won’t pick a fight with?—_ and then the nearest veteran snorts. “Might surprise you to hear this, son, but we had our share of homos in the Big One.”

Steve’s lips twitch. “You don’t say.”

“Yeah, every so often you’d hear about somebody getting a blue ticket home, but I remember a couple cases when everybody knew and nobody said,” another of the vets chimes in. “I didn’t like it at first, but then I figured out, as long as they weren’t up in my face about it and did their jobs, who cares what they did on their own time? We had enough to do fighting Hitler, didn’t need to fight our own guys too.”

“Amen to that,” Bucky says, sliding into the chair next to Steve and slipping his silicone-sleeved left arm around him. “I did my time in the Army under the shitshow that was Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” And just like that, he’s one of them; they ask where he served, and sympathize when he alludes to the boredom and bad food and how much it sucks to get shot at, and sometime in the middle of telling his best actual _funny_ story about deployment, which involves a four-star general and a poorly planned latrine, Bucky realizes that Steve, who was doing legendary heroics four decades before Bucky was even born, is sitting there there glowing with pride over _him,_ as if any idiot couldn’t see that Bucky is the lucky one.

Sometimes it gives him a weird sense of vertigo, how easy it is to be happy these days… or maybe that’s not just happiness. That’s when Bucky excuses himself to wobble out to the balcony and concentrate on not puking into the potted plants for a while. Once his equilibrium starts to come back, though, he spends a few minutes just staring out over the city. He’s never going to love heights, but he gets why Tony and Sam do: it’s a hell of a thing, all of Manhattan laid out below him, a million and a half people down there going about their lives and trusting a bunch of damaged superheroes to keep them relatively safe while they do it. In one of the endless press meet-and-greets Pepper made him do after the whole AIM thing, a reporter from some midwestern paper had asked him why anybody still lived in New York City, after 9/11 and the Chitauri and Hurricane Sandy and every other damn thing that’s come along, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from snapping, _Lady, that’s the whole fuckin’ point._ The fact that they’re still there is its own massive fuck-you to the aliens and gods and terrorists and bad guys and freaking Mother Nature herself, and how fucking wild is it that he, Bucky Barnes, stupid kid from Brooklyn, has somehow ended up in a position to have all of their backs? It’s beautiful, is what it is—beautiful and ridiculous and crazy, as crazy as the fact that him and Steve found each other and the Avengers found them and they have this whole _family_ going now, this amazing thing that not even Hydra could take from them in the end.

 _Jesus, I’m a fucking maudlin drunk,_ Bucky thinks, and right about then, his phone buzzes in his pocket. It’s Sam, and the text reads, **Dude. Get in here. You do not want to miss this.**

 

“So if I lift it,” Tony is saying, when Bucky comes in and finds the party long since broken up but the Avengers, plus Maria Hill, crashed out on a bank of couches, “do I get to rule Asgard?”

“Of course,” says Thor.

“All shall love me and despair,” Tony announces, cracking his knuckles. Bucky slides into the space beside Steve, and Steve does the thing where he fits a whole conversation into one raised eyebrow. Then Tony seizes Mjolnir’s handle with both hands, pulls, and completely fails to move the hammer. He braces a foot on the coffee table and pulls again, muscles straining; then he lets go and looks at it with a strange mix of contempt and anger.

“I’ll be right back,” he says.

Moments later, he and Rhodey body have the gauntlets of their respective iron suits on and are trash talking each other as they try and fail to lift the hammer together, and Bucky is laughing till he damn near cries. “Try it without the help, Rhodey, he’s just weighing you down,” he says, which earns him a glare from Tony.

“Oh, you wanna go next, wiseass?” he asks, and then all of a sudden Steve is shoving him out of his seat.

“Yes,” he says, serious. “Let Bucky give it a shot.”

“Oh, right,” Bucky says, but what the hell; it’s not like he’s gonna put on a more embarrassing display than Tony did. He wraps his hands around the handle, winks at Steve, and pulls. Not a damn thing happens, of course; the fucker doesn’t even shift, no matter how he tries. It doesn’t even feel heavy; it can’t be, considering it’s on a glass-top table that would shatter if it weighed _that_ much. It just kind of feels like the immovable object he vaguely remembers from his high school physics class, the one that ignores the usual laws of physics and makes the universe bend around it instead. Regardless, there’s still enough alcohol in his brain to make him want to posture a little. “Fine,” he tells the hammer, “you asked for it, now you’re gonna get the gun show.” He tightens his left hand on the handle and gives it the little snap-and-click that locks his elbow into place, and then he does the very particular little shoulder twist that kicks on the emergency power source.

“Whoa now,” says Tony, who’s probably the only one who knows what he’s up to, and even Thor looks a little concerned when the whirring noise starts. It goes on for long enough for Steve to say, “Bucky, be careful,” as if that doesn’t make him the biggest hypocrite in the multiverse, and then, abruptly, there’s a _clunk,_ and a thin stream of smoke rises from between two of the metal plates as everything below his elbow goes numb. “Fuck!” Bucky says, laughing. “Tony, help, I think I blew a fuse.”

“The engineer in the room thinks you just fried the circuit board in a two-hundred-thousand-dollar piece of equipment, but yeah, sure, buddy,” Tony says, as if he doesn’t routinely break more expensive crap than Bucky’s arm before breakfast. “Who else is up?” he asks, and Bruce is the next one who’s willing to try it, followed by Sam. (Bucky swears to God the hammer shifts when he grabs it, but nobody else sees it, or at least, nobody else will admit that they saw it, and Sam, believing that Bucky’s trying to be funny, calls him an asshole.) After both Natasha and Steve decline, Maria Hill gives it a shot, and even Helen Cho makes a tentative effort, but by then it’s obvious that nobody’s going to move it. After Thor teases them all a little—and gets plenty of shit right back from Clint, who was the first to try and fail before Bucky arrived—the party starts to break up, as people wander back to their respective floors or ask Jarvis to call them a car.

Bucky gets up, stumbling off-balance when he forgets that his arm won’t do what he tells it, and Tony jerks his head toward the elevator. “Come on, Destructobot, I might as well swap that board out now, you’re just gonna wake me up at some ungodly hour of the morning complaining about it,” he says, and Bucky, who can’t deny that he’d rather face his inevitable hangover without a dead arm on top of it, leans down to kiss Steve and says, “I’ll be right up, okay, bae?”

“If your drunk ass can make it up the stairs,” Steve says, unimpressed, but he doesn’t turn away from the kiss, even though Bucky has to smell like the inside of a moonshine still, so he counts that as a win.

Even with Tony a little the worse for wear himself, it only takes him a minute to get Bucky’s arm opened up. It doesn’t hurt, but Bucky never enjoys this part; even though the Army trained him to do some light maintenance on it himself, back when they still planned to send him into the field with it, it brings up some weird feelings to see the machinery all spread out across the table. Tony knows that now, and he makes a habit of babbling through repair sessions to distract him; Bucky tries to return the favor by not touching the tools Tony scatters all over the workbench, even though he’s itching to get this done faster. He never has figured out what Tony’s damage is about having things handed to him, but hell, Tony’s more than entitled to a little personal weirdness.

“Huh. You did a number on it, all right,” Tony says, tossing the charred circuit board onto the workbench. Bucky winces at the metallic grinding sound it makes. “I know I always ask, and you always say no, but I seriously think you should consider—”

“I’m never gonna let you put a repulsor on it, Tones,” Bucky says, rolling his eyes. “I shouldn’t’ve even been showing off tonight. The fancy stuff’s supposed to be for emergencies only. I don’t wanna start relying on any more tech than I already have to. I mean, nothing against the suits,” he adds quickly. “They’re great. But, you know, there’s a big difference between a ray gun that comes off and one that’s bolted into your scapula.”

“A ray gun? Is that what you think the—you know what, forget it. Repulsors are ray guns, the arm blew a fuse, I live among cavemen, it’s fine.” Tony reaches for the soldering iron, and Bucky tightens his other hand on the arm of the chair. “You good? You want to take something?”

“Yeah, I’m not sure even my liver is ready for me to mix Asgardian booze and Midgardian pharmaceuticals.” Tony looks at him oddly, and he shrugs. “Thor brought this stuff…”

“And you didn’t love me enough to share.” Tony gives him a disappointed look to rival Steve’s. Then he frowns. “Barnes? What’s with the guilty puppy eyes, huh? Am I gonna find out you peed on the rug while I was out?”

Bucky shuts his eyes. He doesn’t know why the combination of booze, camaraderie, and guilt is hitting him especially hard tonight, maybe it has something to do with all that worthiness crap and maybe it doesn’t, but he doesn’t have the wherewithal to fight it anymore. God, Steve is going to _kill_ him. “Tony,” he says, “there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you since… pretty much ever since S.H.I.E.L.D. fell apart, I guess. But you have to promise to hear me out on the whole story and not freak out, because it really, really isn’t her fault.”

“Whose fault?”

“Do you know who Peggy Carter is?” Bucky asks.

“Hmmmm. Carter, Carter. That sounds familiar. Almost as if I heard it nearly as often as I heard the name ‘Steve Rogers’ for the first fifteen years of my life.” Tony sighs, swinging Dum-E’s arm over the workbench to put the finishing touches on his work. “God, I hated them both. I know, completely unfair, but it’s a hell of a thing, growing up in the shadow of two dead legends. By the time you’re old enough to figure out that it’s your dad’s personal damage and he never should’ve made it yours, it’s already stuck in there,” he taps the side of his head, “too deep to get out. You know what I want? I want a machine that overwrites the shitty memories with new ones. Like lucid dreaming, but where you can tell the parental authority figures what you’d say to them if you were an adult who’d had a lot of therapy instead of, you know, _eight.”_

“Well, you’re not alone in thinking you got a raw deal from Howard,” Bucky says. “Steve hates the whole image people have about him from back then almost as much as he hated it when he grew up hearing that _he_ wasn’t good enough all the time. If he’d been around when you were a kid, I guarantee he would’ve been the first one to tell your dad he was being...” Bucky suddenly realizes that this might not be the best time to speak ill of the dead, and lets the words trail off.

Tony, of course, notices. “Almost done,” he says, and in another minute he is; he makes one last adjustment, and the arm flares back to life. Bucky makes a fist, then shakes out the fingers, making sure everything’s back in working order and waiting for the neurological feedback to settle down. It’s the weirdest damn thing: the way the shoulder mechanism wired into his existing nerves, he almost never gets actual phantom limb pain, but whenever the arm gets a reboot, it stings like hell.

“Okay, so what’s the big reveal, Barnstormer?” Tony asks, as he snaps the access panel shut. “Something about Peggy Carter, I got that much. Oh, shit. Did they finally find the body?”

“No,” Bucky says, “they didn’t find a body.”

“Then what is it, Barnes? You’re killing me here. Hang on, you said it wasn’t Carter’s fault. So what wasn’t Carter’s fault?”

Bucky tells him.

 

Steve is almost asleep when Jarvis alerts him that there’s trouble in Tony’s workshop, but once his brain registers _Captain Barnes_ and _altercation,_ his instincts kick in too hard to resist. He slides his feet into shoes, grabs the shield from its spot beside the sofa, and _runs._ Jarvis has the elevator waiting for him by the time he reaches the door; it’s on the express setting, which zips him ten floors down in half as many seconds, and he still tends to get nauseous at high speeds, so, no, he isn’t exactly paying attention to Jarvis’s continued attempts to provide a sitrep. It’s not an excuse, but it’s a reason, anyway, for why he’s criminally underprepared for what he finds when he bursts through the lab door.

Jarvis has used the bots—at least, Steve doesn’t think they have enough brainpower on their own to act so quickly—to restrain Tony; Dum-E and U have their robotic arms wrapped around him, but Tony has one of the repulsor gauntlets, and Bucky has his metal hand over it, preventing him from firing. Or maybe from firing again; the left sleeve of his shirt is charred, like he’s already blocked at least one blast.

“What the _hell,”_ Steve shouts over the whirring bots, and Bucky turns—looking away from his enemy in a fight, he knows better, Steve has time to think, before he realizes, with a shock, that it’s taken exactly two seconds for him to start thinking of Tony as _the enemy,_ instead of maybe his best friend in the world after Bucky. “You two are _friends,”_ he says. “Is this the goddamn staff getting in your heads again? Was _Loki_ here? Or have you two just gone insane?”

He’s winding himself up for a really good speech when he realizes that Bucky’s face is already full of guilt and horror—but Tony’s isn’t; instead, his eyes are blazing. “Did you know?” he says, and whatever is going on, he’s so angry about it that his voice is actually shaking. “Did you know, Rogers?”

“Know what?” Steve says, baffled. “Tony, I don’t know what you think is going on here, but there’s nothing that could be an excuse for—”

“I told him, Stevie.” Bucky looks shaken in a completely different way, a little sick, maybe on the verge of tears. “I told him about Peggy.”

“What,” Steve says, all his own anger bleeding away in shock.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says. He’s still holding onto Tony’s hand, but he’s not paying any attention to him, and now all of Steve’s instincts are at war, wanting to protect Bucky but knowing he shouldn’t need to, that Tony is a friend. He clutches the strap of the shield tighter as Bucky goes on, “I know I promised not to, I—”

“You promised not to tell me? You were harboring a murderer,” Tony’s voice is rising to a roar now, “and you _promised not to tell me?”_

Steve looks him straight in the eyes. There’s no point trying to hide it any longer; this is one of those times when the only way out is through. “I made him promise,” he says. “It’s my fault, Tony, not his.”

“I still agreed to it,” says Bucky, “and anyway, we’re not harboring anybody. We have no idea where she even is.”

“So an assassin’s running around loose and you didn’t report it to a single authority, that’s _much_ better!” Tony jerks his shoulders, trying to break free of the bots, and he just about does—which is why it’s so fortunate that just at that moment, Thor charges into the lab.

“What madness is this?” he shouts, and whatever else you can say about the guy, he has a voice that _carries._ “Have we so few foes remaining that now we need fight amongst ourselves?”

“Oh, easy for you to say,” Tony says. “You didn’t just find out your _friends_ were hiding the truth about the murderer who killed both your parents.”

Thor’s eyes widen, and Steve says quickly, “That’s not the whole story,” but he already knows it’s too little, too late. Bucky is the only Avenger who’s actually met Frigga, and he might be the only one Thor specifically told about her all-too-recent death; Steve only knows because Bucky told him so he could offer his condolences. But Steve knows grief well enough to know that Tony couldn’t have come up with a more damning thing to say right now if he tried.

“And just how much of the story is it, Rogers?” Tony demands. He’s still angry, but it’s worse than that: he looks positively sickened by this. “What else did you decide, in your infinite holier-than-thou wisdom, that the rest of the team just didn’t need to know?”

“Don’t blame Steve. I told you, it’s my fault,” Bucky says, moving across the room to stand beside Steve, and as much as Steve welcomes the solidarity, he wishes he wouldn’t. Let Tony be furious with him all he wants, but if he takes it out on Bucky, it could be the end of the Avengers.

“Give it a rest, Barnes. We both know _mon capitaine_ could order you to jump off a bridge and you’d say Brooklyn or WIlliamsburg.” Pinned down by robots and faced with a Norse god and a super-soldier, Tony’s common sense is starting to reassert itself; he can clearly see that he isn’t going to win a physical fight here. The problem is, he isn’t ready to stop, either. He straightens up, looks Steve in the eye, and says, “Jarvis, send the Iron Legion to escort Captain and Mr. Barnes out of my building.”

“What?” Bucky cries.

“Tony, my friend—” Thor begins, but Tony looks at him next, and whatever he sees in Tony’s face makes even him fall silent.

“I’m sorry, Barnes,” he says, turning to Bucky, “but she killed my mom.”

Steve sees the exact moment when Bucky breaks. “Give us an hour,” he says. “Let Steve get dressed and get his meds before you throw us out in the street. Give us that much for old times’ sake, and after that, I swear, you’ll never have to look at either of us again.”

“I should be so lucky,” Tony says darkly. “If S.H.I.E.L.D. still existed, I’d be sending them your recorded confession right now. You let a killer walk free for _months,_ Barnes. If she murders anybody else’s family before they bring her in, that’s on you. On _both_ of you.” This time, when he jerks away from the robots, they let him go. Thor is still standing there, silent, caught between loyalties; he’s got his hammer in hand, as if he’s ready to stop any further fighting that breaks out, but it’s clear he won’t intervene in what’s already happened.

When Steve turns away, the flash of red, white, and blue must catch Tony’s eye, because suddenly he clenches his fists. “That shield doesn’t belong to you,” he says. “My dad made that shield. You don’t deserve it.”

“Fuck yourself,” Bucky says wearily, and takes the shield out of Steve’s hands, walking out of the lab before anybody can argue.

Steve is startled to find that he was seriously considering giving Tony this last concession, dropping the shield on the floor and leaving it there, cutting his last ties with Captain America. But he isn’t Captain America anymore, is he? He gave the shield to Bucky; it’s no longer his to make a big dramatic gesture with. “Tony—” he begins, but Tony isn’t listening any longer. He raises his hands, and pieces of the Iron Man suit start to sail across the room, wrapping themselves around him; a port in the lab wall opens, and he launches himself into the sky in a blur of red and gold.

Steve decides to allow himself exactly ten seconds to let the shock wash over him. He’s vaguely aware that Thor is speaking to him, but whatever he says, it doesn’t register in the slightest. “I’m sorry,” he says, and walks out of the lab after Bucky.

The elevator is waiting for him, and Bucky doesn’t look at Steve as he steps in and the doors close. It’s Jarvis who breaks the silence, with an apologetic little _ding,_ the AI equivalent of clearing his throat. “Sirs, I sincerely regret to inform you that I’m under very strict orders to see you out of the Tower. You now have less than fifty-seven minutes remaining.”

“Yeah, Jarvis, we got it,” Steve says. He feels numb all over, body and brain. It’s not the first time he’s been kicked out of an apartment, far from it, but this… this is the first time since his own ma died that he’s had to leave a place that actually felt like home.

“I’ve taken the liberty of advising the other Avengers of recent events,” Jarvis continues. “Master Barton has responded to inform you that his car service is returning to the Tower so that you may accompany him to his Brooklyn apartment for the night.”

“Oh, that’s generous of him, Jarvis, but we can’t—” Steve begins.

“With apologies, sir, Master Barton anticipated that you might decline and further instructed me to tell you—and this is a direct quote—to ‘shove your pride, you don’t need to wind up wandering around Midtown at three in the morning looking for a place to crash just because Stark threw a shit fit.’” Jarvis pauses. “Captain Barnes, your heart rate and respiration appear to be elevated significantly. Do you require medical assistance?”

Bucky gasps a lungful of air. “No, J. Thanks, but I know what a fucking anxiety attack feels like. I can power through.”

“Very well, sir.” For a computer, Steve thinks numbly, Jarvis sure has mastered that don’t-listen-to-me-I’m-just-the-most-advanced-AI-on-the-planet tone. He has a point; Bucky’s metal hand is bending the elevator handrail, but this is _not_ the time to bring it up. “I’ll alert you when Master Barton’s car arrives. Shall I also give you a ten-minute warning before your time expires?”

“Sure, J., thanks,” Steve says, as the elevator doors open. He walks into the apartment, _their_ apartment, their home, trying not to think about the fact that it might be for the last time. Bucky was smarter than he would’ve been, buying them some time, but it isn’t much. The crucial things will be their meds, he thinks, and then enough clothes to get them by until maybe Nat or Sam can box up the rest of their stuff. Then their phone chargers, the shoebox of photos of Bucky’s family, the go-bag with the rest of Bucky’s Captain America gear—will that even matter? What does this mean for the Avengers, anyway? _This brings it to a close,_ Thor said when they found the staff, and maybe that’s the way it should be; Steve already had one foot out the door, didn’t he? But this was more to Bucky than just a job; it wasthe thing that gave him meaning, and it’s going to hit him hard when he realizes he might be losing that too. Steve mentally puts it on the list: find a place to live for at least the semi-long term, figure out how much money they’ve actually got to work with, and then talk about what else Bucky might want to do with his life.

And speaking of Bucky, he hasn’t even walked through the front door yet. He’s still standing in the foyer, looking like a deer in the headlights.

Steve walks back to the door. He’s exhausted and wired at the same time, and he desperately wants to strategize, get moving, _do_ something, because that’s always been how he copes best. But what Bucky needs is probably the exact opposite of that, so he’s just going to have to suck it up, slow down, and deal with one problem at a time. “Sweetheart, what are you thinking?” he asks, as gently as he can.

“I…” Bucky looks at him bleakly, lost. “I think you should go to Clint’s tonight, but if you don’t want me to go with you, I can find my own place to crash. I’ll take my bike, maybe head out to Becca’s tomorrow.”

“Or,” says Steve, “and this is just a crazy thought, so bear with me, maybe we both go to Clint’s and get some sleep before we decide if running off to Ewing is really the best way to handle this.”

“Steve, this was not a small fuckup on my part,” Bucky says. “This was a _catastrophic_ fuckup where I managed to break a promise to you, lose us both at least one friend, and get us thrown out in the street all at once. Not to mention that I probably blew your chance to find Peggy because now we’re cut off from all the stuff Jarvis was monitoring for activity. And Tony—”

“—Is being an ass, and he’s not gonna stop any time soon. But once he calms down, he’ll realize that I just wanted to spare him from…” Steve winces. He can’t tell that lie, not even in his own head. “No. I was trying to spare myself. Maybe Tony won’t ever understand, and even if he does, he’s got every right to be angry. But I think he will see that the person he’s really angry with is me. Peggy wasn’t in her right mind, and you told him the truth when I wouldn’t. Yes, you broke your word to me, but I had no right to ask you to make that promise in the first place.”

“But I did promise, and I did break it, and now everything’s gone to shit,” Bucky says, low and strained. “How can you not hate me right now? I just  _ruined our lives,_ Steve.”

“Okay, that’s a little extreme, Buck. It definitely isn’t how I wanted to spend the weekend, but getting thrown out of an apartment is not world-ending stuff. And I’m sorry this hurt Tony, I really am, but at least the truth is out now. Maybe it’s for the best; I’m starting to think that the longer we kept it from him, the worse it would have been in the end.” He reaches up and lays his hand against Bucky’s cheek. “You know, Tony said that stuff about you taking my orders because he knew it would hurt me if he could make me think you’re only in love with who I used to be. But this whole thing proves once and for all that you care about doing what’s right more than you care about making me happy, which is exactly the way it should be. There’s no relationship in the world where one person shouldn't be allowed to call the other one on their bullshit. Do you know what we used to call a guy who was dead set on doing the right thing, no matter what the consequences were to him personally and no matter who he pissed off in the process?”

“What?” Bucky says.

“Captain America,” Steve tells him. “Congratulations, Buck. You earned the title before, but now you officially embody it.”

“Wow,” Bucky says. “Having your moral compass _sucks.”_

“No arguments here. Think you can gather up whatever you’ll need for the next couple of days? Once Tony cools down and we find a place where we can settle in, we can see about having Sam or Natasha box up the rest of our stuff.”

“Yeah.” Bucky nods. “Okay.”

They make it out of the Tower with eight minutes to spare, Bucky carrying two duffel bags and a backpack and Steve lugging the wheelie suitcase he bought for their honeymoon, full to bursting with clothes and the keepsakes that neither of them can leave behind. Clint gets out of the car—Steve tries not to be an outright vengeful person, but maybe it’s a tiny bit satisfying that he was almost to Brooklyn when he made the shiny black Lincoln turn around for them, and the meter is still running—and opens the trunk to help them load their bags inside. “My place isn’t exactly the Ritz,” he says, waving off Steve’s attempt to thank him, “but I’ve been on the street a time or two, and it’s a hell of a lot better than nothing.”

“You know, you’re probably not exactly endearing yourself to Tony by helping us,” Steve points out, as Bucky stows the last bag and closes the trunk.

“Yeah, well,” says Clint, “even if it wasn’t pretty crappy of Tony to throw you out, the thing people forget about me sometimes is that I have a little personal experience with brainwashing.”

“Oh,” Steve says. That does make a few things fall into place. “Jarvis filled you in?”

“On the fight you had with Tony, yeah, but Nat’s the one who gave me the rest,” he says, holding up his phone. The screen is bright with popup text bubbles. “She said you asked her and Sam not to make it public that Carter was alive, but she figured the statute of limitations was up when you told Tony.” He lets a beat go by, then asks, “So you haven’t heard from her since…”

“The helicarriers, no.”

“Dude, it’s been, what, eight months? Nine?”

“Something like that,” says Steve, who knows to the day how long it’s been.

“Shit. Do you think she’s okay?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says. Reaching for Bucky’s hand, he says, “Could we talk about this later?”

“Yeah,” Clint says. “Of course. Sorry.” He waits for them to get settled in the back seat of the car, then taps on the screen that separates them from the driver, who rolls down the window and says, “Where to?”

As terrible as the circumstances are, Steve can’t help but feel a surge of relief when he says, “Brooklyn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that happened.
> 
> (I have signed up for a Halloween bang, because I'm obviously a crazy person. But it's only supposed to be 5K words. Which is why the fic is currently at 10K and the ghost is welcome to show up any time now. And meanwhile, I have like a hundred comments I haven't responded to because I am Very Bad At That, but rest assured that I love all of you who are waiting patiently for more of this one, though. Y'all are keeping me afloat. *metal-handed fistbump*)


	19. Wanda

After they move into Clint’s apartment, Bucky goes to bed and stays there for a week.

Steve tries not to make a big fuss about it. He knows this is the form depression takes sometimes, and he knows it’s cyclical and Bucky is strong enough to ride it out, but he’s also used to Bucky’s rough patches taking the form of his sleeping too little and worrying too much instead of sleeping all day and not being able to muster up any enthusiasm for anything. Steve’s reaction to feeling helpless has always been to push back harder, but that would definitely make this worse, so he tries to strike a balance between giving Bucky space and forcing him to take care of himself. And to his credit, Bucky takes his meds when Steve reminds him, and chokes down the food Steve puts in front of him, and agrees that, yeah, he  _ would  _ feel better if he got up and took a walk or went down to the gym for an hour; he just can’t. It sucks, and it’s exhausting, and Steve has the same feeling he had when his mother died: he’d gladly take all of this on himself if it would spare the person he loves. And this time, it’s compounded by the knowledge that this one is in large part his own fault.

Against pretty much everybody’s advice, he makes an overture to Tony, trying to mend fences between them. He writes a letter where he pours his heart out about Peggy and everything else, apologizing for lying to Tony and to himself about his motives. He ends it with, “If you need us, we’ll be there,” and sends it off to the Tower by courier, then spends days waiting for a response. When a knock on the door does come, he jumps up eagerly, hoping they’re finally going to hash this out; even Tony’s biting and painfully accurate sarcasm would be better than radio silence. But it’s not Tony on the other side of the door. It’s Natasha.

“I’m not on his side,” she says, before Steve can open his mouth. “I’m not on yours either, but I know what it’s like to have a past you want to keep to yourself.”

“I know,” Steve says.

“I’m not leaving the Tower,” she continues. “The Avengers are my family now. Staying together is more important than how we stay together.”

It’s not a question, but Steve knows she wants him to say he agrees. He wishes he could. He also wishes he could tell her that Tony’s the one who split up the team, not him, but that’s not fair either. “If you think you have to make a choice between us and Tony,” he says, “you don’t. I don’t know whether we’re staying in the Avengers, but Bucky and I are still here for you, no matter what.”

Some of the tension goes out of her spine at that. Steve knows her well enough to know he only sees her relief because she lets him, but she does let him. “How are you and Barnes holding up?” she asks.

“We’ll get through it,” Steve says. Clint’s so-called guestroom is really a pull-out couch in the corner, which means that Bucky, who’s currently impersonating a lump under a pile of blankets, is definitely hearing all of this, so he adds, “You know, there’s a gym about two blocks from here, and I bet they have a space you and Buck could use for sparring practice, if you ever wanted to do that.”

“I’d like that,” Natasha says. “Have him call me. Sam sends his best, by the way.”

“Last time I talked to him, he said all three of us were assholes.”

“And that’s not his best?”

Steve smiles. “Tell him we miss him, and that we’d love have both of you over for dinner.”

“Only if Clint’s not cooking,” Natasha says, before she hugs him goodbye and heads out again. 

It’s not much, but after she leaves, Bucky voluntarily rolls out of bed for the first time in days, even if it’s just to flop back down on the couch and turn on a _Dog Cops_ rerun. Steve joins him, even though he’s seen this episode approximately nine thousand times, and Bucky puts his head on Steve’s lap. “Poor Nat,” he says. “I didn’t even think about what this was gonna do to her.”

“It’s okay, Buck. She’s tough.”

“I feel like such a dick. I’m letting everybody down.”

“Hey,” Steve says. “What do we know about negative self-talk?”

“I never should’ve sent you to therapy,” Bucky mock-grumbles. But he sounds a little more like himself now, and while Steve knows better than to read too much into one conversation, he’s grateful to Nat for reminding them both that there’s a world outside the apartment, where plenty of people still love them.

 

“So I’ve got a proposal for you,” Clint says. They’re all sitting around the kitchen counter, because Bucky refuses to move from within arm’s length of the coffeepot. He still looks tired and beaten down by life, but at least he’s managed to shower and put real pants on today. (Steve is aware that it would sound like sarcasm if he said that out loud, but he’s sincerely proud of Bucky for the effort he’s making to fight this uphill battle against his own brain.)

“Okay,” Steve says. “Go ahead.”

“So, uh, you know Laura’s pregnant.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, “you might’ve mentioned something about that.” It’s pretty much all Clint talks about right now. “Do you want us to watch Lucky while you’re in Iowa?”

“Nah, Lucky’s going with me this time,” Clint says. “That’s kind of the thing. I’m moving out there… let’s say semi-permanently. Tony said he’d arrange for a quinjet to be ready in case I need to get back here fast. And when I’m in town, it’s just gonna make more sense for me to stay at the Tower.”

Steve can’t say he’s surprised; Tony has been angling to get Clint to move in for almost two years. “Are you taking our—the seventy-sixth floor?”

“Nope, I’ll be on seventy-two. Yours is just sitting empty. I don’t know what Tony’s planning for it.”

“Okay,” Steve says, telling himself it doesn’t matter. Sure, the Tower was their first home, but maybe Nat was onto something: being together is definitely more important than  _ where  _ they’re together. “So what’s the proposal?”

“I’m thinking about selling this building.”

“What?” Bucky says. “But you said…”

“I said I wouldn’t sell to any shady-ass developers who’d try to kick my tenants out ’cause they’re on rent control,” Clint says. “Never said I wouldn’t sell. And money’s tight right now. Laura’s been out of work since S.H.I.E.L.D. went down, and linguistics jobs aren’t exactly falling out of the sky in Iowa. And as for me, even if Tony keeps bankrolling the Avengers forever, who knows how long I can keep doing this? I don’t have any superpowers. One good injury could be a career-ender for me, and then what? This building’s worth at least eight million, which would pay off the farm, put all three kids through school, and let Laura stay home indefinitely. She could probably even hire some help around the house so she can finally finish her dissertation.”

“Laura wouldn’t sell the farm and bring the kids here?” Bucky asks. 

Clint shakes his head. “I know you don’t think much of Iowa, but it’s their home, Barnes. I’m not gonna uproot them.”

“Are you asking us to buy your building?” Steve says.

“No, I’m asking if you’re  _ interested  _ in buying the building,” Clint says, reaching down to scratch Lucky’s ears. “If you were, I’d make it a fair deal.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Steve says. “Let us talk it over.”

“Yeah, take your time. I’m gonna take Lucky to the park, give you guys a minute.”

“Thanks,” Steve says. When the door shuts behind Clint and Lucky, he says, “That’s a lot to take in.”

“Do we have that kind of money?” Bucky says slowly. “I know the Army gave you all that back pay, but—”

“Well, it’s not just the back pay,” Steve says. “Here.” He pulls out his phone, opens the online banking app, and slides it across the table.

Bucky’s jaw drops. “When the fuck did that happen?”

“When the Army cut me the check, I didn’t have the first idea what to do with the money, beyond buying you a really overpriced coffee maker. So I asked Jarvis to invest it for me, and, uh. It turns out he’s pretty good at picking stocks.”

“Stevie, we could buy a fucking mansion with this.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, “we could. Do you want to?”

Bucky shakes his head. “No. I’d feel way too weird about it. Truth is, I’d rather make sure my family’s set up and then give the rest of it to a charity or something. ...What? You’re looking at me really weird right now.”

“Every time I think I couldn’t love you more,” Steve says. When Bucky turns pink and looks down, he goes on, “You’d make a great building manager. You fixed a lot of stuff for Clint anyway, when you lived here.”

“So we’d keep this place, I guess.” Bucky looks around. Clint’s place is the whole top floor of the building—not quite a penthouse, more like a glorified loft, but a big open space with lots of light. “I know it feels small after the Tower, but it’s bigger than the apartment my folks raised four kids in.”

“I think the bathroom is bigger than the apartment Ma raised me in.”

“Always gotta one-up me with the tenement thing, don’t you.” Bucky’s eyes dart around the room. “We could make it look a lot less like crap than it does.”

“There’s a ringing endorsement.”

“I wouldn’t’ve painted the walls purple, I’m just sayin’,” says Bucky. “Steve, is this even something you want? We could live anywhere with that kind of money.”

“Yeah, but this is Brooklyn,” Steve says. “It’s home. And I’ve never had a place before that no one could kick me out of.”

“Unless, you know, more aliens show up and destroy the building or something.”

“Loving your optimism here.”

“I’m being realistic. You know how hard it is to get alien insurance nowadays?”

“We’re not doing this unless we both want it,” Steve says, reaching across the table to take Bucky’s hands and running his thumb across the metal plates. “And this isn’t a decision we have to make right now if you’re not feeling up to it.”

“I…” Bucky says slowly, “I think I kind of love it.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Steve grins, reaching across the counter to clink his coffee cup against Bucky’s. “Here’s to fresh starts, then.”

“Fresh starts,” Bucky says. “I like the sound of that.”

 

Over the next month, aliens, supervillains, and interdimensional monsters stubbornly refuse to attack New York, which means it’s unclear whether Steve and Bucky are still Avengers—but things get better, all the same. Bucky gradually starts acting more like his old self, losing the hunted look in his eyes; Steve starts filling his sketchbook with scenes from their new neighborhood. The sale of the building goes through without a hitch; a moving truck arrives to take Clint’s possessions to Iowa, and another truck arrives with the stuff Natasha put in storage for them after they left the Tower. There’s one carefully packed crate that they’re both surprised to see, and when neither of them can ignore it anymore, Bucky pries it open and takes out the Magritte painting that Tony gave them for their old place. 

“If we keep this,” Bucky says, after they both stare at it in silence, “we’re gonna think about Tony every time we see it.”

“I’m not sure that’s a bad thing,” Steve says.

Bucky looks at it thoughtfully for a long time, but eventually he says, “What the hell—we can always take it down if we decide we hate it, right?”, and that’s how it ends up over the mantel. In the long run, Steve ends up glad they kept it; he thinks it might always hurt a little, but as the weeks go by, it gradually turns into a reminder of where they’ve been, not just of what they’ve lost.

 

Steve is in his last semester in the EMT program he started in Manhattan, which means he’s spending a lot of time commuting back and forth to Brooklyn. Bucky still doesn’t know if he’ll get a call the next time the Avengers assemble—his paychecks keep rolling in, but he wouldn’t put it past Jarvis to quietly leave him on payroll—but he’s got plenty to do as soon as the building’s tenants discover that he’s way better at fixing stuck windows and leaky faucets than Clint was. (In fairness to Clint, it helps that the metal hand is kind of a built-in power tool.) So it’s early spring before he gets around to picking up a couple cans of nice, tasteful off-white paint.

“This place is gonna look so great when I’m done,” he says, when he kisses Steve goodbye at the door.

“If you waited for the weekend, I’d help you,” Steve says, hooking an arm around Bucky’s neck.

“Nope. You and your asthma aren’t getting anywhere near the paint fumes. I’ll have it all aired out by the time you get back.” He gives him a gentle shove. “Now get out of here so I can work.”

“Okay, jerk,” Steve says, laughing, as he brushes a lock of hair off his forehead. His hair is getting long enough to do that again, and Bucky has missed that little unconscious gesture. He grins when Steve turns around at the elevator to wave at him, and blows him a kiss. The building’s tenants know them well enough now to give them shit about how they still act like newlyweds, and he one hundred percent does not give a fuck, because things are going so well for them right now.

He’s finishing the back wall when the door opens, but the squeaky hinges were one of the first things he fixed in the building, and the radio is on, which is probably why his super-soldier hearing doesn’t pick it up. It’s nothing more than a former sniper’s sixth sense about these things, the hairs standing up on the back of his neck, that make him realize he’s being watched.

He turns around and finds Peggy Carter in the doorway.

She’s standing very still, arms crossed over her chest, and while Bucky’s first instinct is to throw the paint roller at her and then dive for his shield, what he actually does is take a good look at her, assessing what’s changed and what hasn’t. Her hair is blonde now, cut in one of those short, aggressively modern styles, and she’s done that thing with her makeup that Bucky vaguely knows as  _ contouring;  _ she’s obviously trying to make herself less recognizable at a glance. She’s also wearing a puffy coat that could theoretically hide plenty of weapons, and boots with a low, practical heel, very much like the ones Natasha wears when she wants to look good but also wants to be able to kill a man with her thighs if she needs to. Bucky takes a deep breath before he sets the paint roller down in the tray and says, “Hi.”

A long moment goes by before she manages to respond, faintly, “Hi.”

“Come in,” Bucky says. “And shut the door, okay? Our neighbors aren’t exactly nosy, but you probably don’t wanna give ’em any excuses to get curious.” When she hesitates, he says, “It’s not a trap. The windows are all open, and you could go right down the fire escape and disappear in thirty seconds, I promise.”

“I don’t—” she begins, and then stops, as if she’s not sure where that sentence is headed.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, “you do. You look for escape routes every time you walk through a door, and you’ve probably already spotted eighteen things in here you could use as a weapon. I know, ’cause that’s how they trained me. But if you meant to kill me, you wouldn’t’ve let me see you, and I sure as hell don’t want to fight you, so you might as well come in and take your coat off. I’m gonna finish up this wall and then I’ll be right with you, okay?”

She gives him a slightly baffled look, but she nods, and Bucky picks up the roller again, in his left hand, because he’s pretty sure his right palm is too sweaty to hold it. Turning his back on her is the absolute scariest thing he’s ever done, but he figures it’ll show that he trusts her—and if he needs a minute to quietly freak out about this, well, that’s between him and the wall. He resolutely doesn’t look at her until he’s covered up the last trace of purple, and then he pours the paint back into the bucket, pops the lid on, and goes to clean up. “Make yourself at home,” he says, when he comes back to the living room. “I’ll make you some tea if you want. Fair warning, though, Steve says I suck at it.”

Peggy turns her head to look at him. She’s sitting on the couch, ramrod-straight with her hands folded in her lap, and she looks… scared might be too strong a word. Tense, maybe. “Why?” she says.

“I dunno, I don’t drink it myself so I don’t really know what it’s supposed to taste like?”

She shakes her head. “Why are you treating me like this?”

“What,” Bucky says, “like a person?”

“Yes,” Peggy says. “Like a person.”

He wants to say something glib, but he forces it down. “When I lost my arm,” he says, holding up his left hand to show her, “a lot of people only saw the injury, you know? They didn’t see  _ me  _ anymore. I was just Wounded War Vet, capital letters, trademark symbol. But I was more than the stuff that was done to me, and so are you.” He sits down next to her, brushing his hair back with both hands, and says, “Why’d you come here, Peggy? And don’t tell me you were hoping to find Steve. You’re too smart not to case the place before you came in, so you know he’s not around.”

“I need…” Peggy looks at him like this doesn’t come easily to her. “I need help.”

“Okay,” Bucky says. “Like patched-up-after-a-fight help, or place-to-stay help, or what?”

“I need help remembering,” she says.

“Uh. Okay, but I wasn’t around in 1945. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather talk to Steve about this?”

She shakes her head. “He’ll tell me who he thought I was,” she says. “I need the truth.”

Bucky puts his hand over his face and blows out a breath. The thing is, she’s not wrong: give Steve Rogers twenty minutes and a cup of coffee, and he can convince pretty much anybody that they’re a stronger, nobler, better person than they thought they were—which is great, but in this case, he can see how it wouldn’t be  _ useful.  _ It’s still a hell of a request, though. “Okay,” he says, sitting up straight. “I said I’d help you, and I meant it. But afterward, I have to at least be allowed to tell Steve you were here, ’cause we just went through a big thing about not keeping secrets. Deal?”

She looks like she’s thinking about it, which is pretty funny, considering how much she’s asking for here, but eventually she nods. “Deal.”

“Okay.” Bucky goes over to the front closet and finds the box that Maria Hill sent over to them: Steve’s SSR records, what they called his personal effects, and most importantly, the files on the Howling Commandos, including the one stamped CARTER, MARGARET E. He brings it over to her and says, “Let’s get started.”

 

The farm is fifty kilometers outside of Novi Grad, which Pietro could cover in a minute, and he even jokingly offers to carry her, but Wanda rolls her eyes at him and tells him to steal them a car instead. Something inconspicuous; something  normal.  They’ve been hiding since the Avengers captured von Strucker, and they don’t know how much the Americans might have gotten out of him. Best not to take any chances.

Not if they want to win.

Wanda isn’t certain that Zemo will be at his father’s farm when they show up, but for once, their luck is actually good: he’s not only there but alone, out in a field by himself, replacing part of a decaying fence line. He stops and looks up as they approach—Pietro is walking with exaggerated slowness, sulking about how she’s been keeping him reined in lately. She ignores it. He might be the older one, but there’s never been any question about which Maximoff twin was the more dominant of the two. In fact, her mother used to call Wanda “my little mastermind.”

Zemo watches them cross the field, alert but not worried, and why would he be? Even if they didn’t look like they might have any number of reasons to be here, he’s ex-special forces and they’re a couple of kids. When they get close, he calls out, “<Are you two lost?>”, and comes forward with a smile, like he’s going to give these two confused city kids a helping hand. Which is when Wanda springs forward and casts her spell on him.

The vision is incredible, honestly one of her strongest so far. She shows him the Americans in their tower in New York, and Tony Stark, the Merchant of Death himself, on the top story, building one of his weapons. This one is a robot, which builds other robots, which replicate at a ridiculous pace and spread out across Europe to hunt people down, to maim and kill, until they finally get to Novi Grad itself. She shows him a picture of himself coming back to the farm, still wearing his EKO Scorpion uniform, and finding it in ruins; shows him the ruins of the robots, which—and she thinks this is a nice touch—his father obviously fought bravely, given that several of them lie in pieces outside the house. She shows him searching for his family—hours, it takes him, maybe even days—and finally finding them in the rubble of the old barn, where good old Helmut Senior would have told Heike and Karl to hide. She lets the vision-Zemo find their bodies cold, his father’s arms wrapped around his daughter-in-law and his grandson as if he could shelter them even in death, and then she shows him Tony Stark flying back to America and striding onto a stage in one of his fine black suits, where, in the final indignity, an American in military uniform awards him a medal for his bravery.

It’s truly some of her finest work.

When Zemo comes back to himself, he’s staring at her as if she’s just shown him the most astonishing truth of his life. “<Who  _ are  _ you?>” he asks, and she has to hide a smile. 

“<Someone who wants to help you stop them,>” she says, and for a moment, she feels as if she’s already won.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kisses to everyone who waited so patiently for this. ♥♥♥


	20. Peggy, Part 2

“When I was in the Army,” Bucky says, holding up his beer glass, “and later, in my second career as an actuary—”

That earns him a chorus of _boos_ from around the table. Everybody present knows the truth and nobody else (with the surprising exception of Natasha) thinks his cover story is as hilarious as he does, but Bucky isn’t about to be the first Captain America in history to go down because some random Hydra sympathizer happens to be on the waitstaff of an Irish pub in Bed-Stuy. “—I found out,” he goes on, “that a lot more people than you’d think can make decent soldiers. You learn how to follow orders, how to do things you never thought you could do, because you _have_ to. But I also found out that there are some people who have something extra. Those are the ones who don’t run toward danger because they’re under orders; they go that extra mile because they choose to. It’s who they are. Am I thrilled that my husband is one of those idiots? Not really. But I damn well _respect_ him for it. When he said he wanted to get a new job saving people’s lives, part of me kind of wanted to beg him not to. I mean, seriously, being the guy who shows up sometimes even before the cops when there’s a shooting or a stabbing and somebody’s bleeding out in an alley? But let’s face it, Stevie has _always_ been that guy, and as much as it drives me crazy sometimes, I wouldn’t change it for the world. It’s what we—what _I_ —love about him. So let’s hear it for Steve Barnes, licensed EMT. To Steve.”

“To Steve,” everybody echoes, and there’s a round of clinking glasses, while Steve does the thing where he looks a little proud of himself, but he’s also blushing so hot that Bucky suspects he could light a cigarette off his cheeks. He flops back into his chair, settling his right arm behind Steve’s back and grinning across the table at Sam, who gives him the raised eyebrow and little nod that mean he did okay, and Nat, who rolls her eyes at him, which means basically the same thing. Clint’s made a special trip in from Iowa for this, but his approval wouldn’t mean much, considering he’s already several shots into the celebration, and Bruce has turned back to Becca, who he’s evidently decided is a safe person and latched onto like a lifeline. Bucky makes a mental note to grab him later and thank him for coming out. He completely understands why Bruce hesitates to go into unknown and potentially uncontrollable situations, but it does mean they haven’t seen him since…

Bucky cuts off that line of thought and looks at Sharon Carter instead. She’s snagged the seat to Steve’s right, and she’s been talking to his sister Lizzie (or, more accurately, listening to Lizzie) for most of the evening, but now she’s leaning over to ask Steve something.  He tunes in on the conversation long enough to hear Steve say, “...should really get a diploma too, you earned it, following me to all those classes,” and Sharon laughs, which means they’re friends again. Thank fuck, because trying to stay mad at her was making Steve miserable.

If there’s anybody Steve _should_ be mad at, it’s the one person who’s conspicuous by his absence tonight. And that’s a surprise, because if there was anything that should’ve gotten Tony to come around, it’s a place where the whiskey list is thicker than the dinner menu.

Bucky scowls at himself for that uncharitable thought, and of course that’s exactly when Steve happens to glance over at him and frown back. “You okay, Buck?”

“Yeah. Fuckin’ rotator cuff’s acting up again,” Bucky lies smoothly. “And if I can feel that, it means I need more booze. C’mon, Clint, quit bogarting the tequila.”

“You better not be mixing that with your Percoset,” Steve says, as Clint slides the bottle across the table.

“It’s cool. If my heart stops, I got a licensed medical professional right here.” Bucky grins. “Jeez, your _face._ It’s fine, you big hypocrite, I’m way more careful than you.”

“That’s not exactly a high bar, B.,” Sam says, laughing.

Steve chucks a pretzel bite at him, which only misses hitting him on the forehead because Natasha snags it out of the air and primly pops it into her mouth. Bucky grins. God, he’s missed them both.

Becca taps him on the shoulder, and he turns to see that she’s gathered up her coat and purse. “Aw,” he says. “You’re leaving already?”

“Gotta be up early to drive back to Ewing in the morning. Walk me out?”

That’s Barnes sister code for _we need to talk,_ so Bucky reluctantly gets up from his chair and follows her out of the bar. “I was just messing with Steve,” he says, once they reach the sidewalk. “I’m really not being stupid about meds or anything.”

“It’s not that.” Becca shoves her phone into her purse and meets his eyes. “Who’s he looking for?”

“Looking…” Bucky hesitates, briefly weighing the cost-benefit analysis of lying to Becca. It almost always comes out negative, but it’s worth a shot. “I guess he was hoping Tony might show up.”

“I think _you_ were hoping Tony would show up,” she says, and Bucky thinks, _Shit._ Why does he bother when she can read him like a book? “Steve asked if Tony was coming three hours ago, and Bruce said no, but Steve still hasn’t stopped watching the door.”

Bucky sighs. “Okay, don’t tell him I told you, but he’s got this old friend from when he first started with S.H.I.E.L.D. She’s… the stuff she does is… well, I invited her, but I figured she wouldn’t come in if she felt exposed. I can’t go into details, but it’s not dangerous or anything.”

“Oh, well, consider me reassured,” Becca says, rolling her eyes.

“Becs,” Bucky says reproachfully. “It’s just one of those things that isn’t my story.”

“You’ve been collecting those lately, haven’t you?” Becca gives him the look that means she’s provisionally decided to tolerate his bullshit for now, but she’ll get to the bottom of this eventually. Hell, Bucky doesn’t know if there’s any reason not to tell his sisters anymore, about Steve’s past or about Peggy—it’s possible they’ve already pieced a lot of it together anyway. Maybe he should even be warning them. He wishes he had Steve’s certainty about any of this. “Well, I hope he gets to see his friend soon,” Becca says, going in for a hug, and Bucky returns it. “You’ve both been through so much. I wish there was anything I could do for you two.”

“The best thing you could’ve done was be here tonight, Becca,” Bucky says, and then he flags down a cab for her and sees her off before heading back into the pub.

It’s much too short a time until everybody else decides they need to get home too, and Bucky sees them off reluctantly… until they’ve waved goodbye to the last departing car and Steve, standing next to him, links arms with him and murmurs, “Hey, sailor, you going my way?”

“Okay, it kills me that you’ve been in the modern world for, what, three years now and that’s still your idea of flirting,” Bucky says, delighted. It wasn’t that long ago that Steve wouldn’t even touch him in public.

“That’s rich coming from you, Mister ‘Nice pants, take ’em off.’”

“Worked on you, didn’t it?” Bucky says, and Steve turns bright pink, which is even more adorable than the dumb flirting. All in all, it leaves Bucky feeling pretty good about his chances for the evening.

Which is why it’s such a shock when he opens the door to their apartment, meaning to go in for a kiss as soon as the door closes behind him, and finds Peggy Carter perched on the sofa.

Some part of Bucky must not be a complete idiot, because he not only manages not to jump himself, but also gets Steve’s arm in a firm grip, just in case the dumb punk decides it’s a good idea to run over and throw his arms around the twitchy ex-assassin who could break him with her pinky finger. Steve goes the opposite way this time, though: he freezes, just like he did the first time he saw her at the bridge in D.C. “Peggy,” he says, voice cracking a little. And then, of course, he asks the only question he really cares about: “Are you okay?”

It’s Steve all over, but it’s still a dumb question, because Bucky can see the answer to it written all over her face. “I need your help,” she says.

“Okay,” Bucky says, before Steve can jump to any conclusions and let his mouth and/or heart get him into trouble. “What’s going on?”

Peggy must have been rehearsing this scene in her head since she broke into their place, if not before, because Bucky knows the look on her face from his own: she knows what she has to do, but she also knows that once she does, there’s no going back.

What she finally says is, “I’m not the only Asset.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one is a super short chapter. It's supposed to be three times as long in order to set up the plot for the last 1/3 of this fic, but I also haven't updated this fic in forever and didn't want you, my very kind readers and constant encouragers, to think I'd forgotten it. (I finally know what happens next; I just need the time and attention span to write it.)
> 
> P.S. Speaking of attention spans: I *might* have a separate short fic in the works about this-universe-Peggy adjusting to the modern world, but I'm trying to decide if it's worth the amount of time it's going to take. Anyone deeply interested in that, or should I just get on with this story? :)


End file.
